[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve indigot sport Law.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Leave me a message.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:07] Speaker C: Hey, Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Welcome to the latest edition of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport. In today's episode, we'll be talking about the power of measuring culture as the first step to meaningful change in sport.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: Yeah, we're really thrilled to welcome Bryce Tully to the episode today. Bryce is the co founder and CEO of Inner Logic, a strategic partner of Sport Law. Interlogic has developed a culture measurement platform for sport called the Sport Culture Index. And for the last year, Sport Law has been bringing the Sport Culture Index to life with our clients. And we're really excited about expanding this important work to help restore health into the sport system. In this episode, we're going to be talking to Bryce about the Sport Culture Index and how measuring culture can elevate sport. Before we jump in, we want to know what's coming across your desk this week, Steve.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Well, Dina, as usual, lots going on.
Just yesterday when we prepare for these podcasts, I kind of say, well, what's going on? And I just look at what happened yesterday. One of the things that routinely comes up is people problems.
And a lot of people look at creating policies and updated bylaws to fix their people problems. But one of the things that I like to share is that the best policy suite or the best set of bylaws in the entire planet will never change your people problems. And that's because people either don't know your policies or procedures, or they fail to follow them. So I know we've advocated on previous podcasts about getting the right people. And as we talk about today culture, getting the right people with the same value of culture that your sport has really will help eliminate some of those people problems. And in fact, the people problem that I'm speaking about today actually is leading to litigation.
So one of the consults I provided yesterday was trying to segregate the interests of the board members individually who were personally named in a lawsuit versus the needs and the interests of the corporation of the organization. So trying to segregate those two were really somewhat complicated and took a bit of time to talk about.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: How about you, Dina?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: What's new?
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Oh, Steve like these sticky issues, right? The ones where it's these people problems? Well, I had something completely different.
Although it's a human I don't want to even call it a problem. It's a human situation. So last night, I accompanied there were five women, five mothers in a conversation about how to support their team of 1213 year old athletes through the death of their coach. So he passed away in December of last year and their PSO knew of the work I was doing around grief and loss and connected me with them. Paid for my time to support the team in helping to understand what happened, what might happen to a young teenager, and developmentally, what are some of the things they could expect as they grieve the loss of their coach? Also, for mums, we tend to carry a lot and recognizing their own grief and sadness. Some of them, they were best friends with this coach and so just really helping them give some language and comfort. And some of the things that the mum said at the end was, why don't we know this stuff?
Why do I have to come to a Zoom meeting to figure all of this way of supporting myself and others through these life altering moments? So it was a really exquisite conversation and it reminds me why I do the work I do. So that's what came across my desk last. You know, maybe that's a really beautiful segue to Bryce and his team of extraordinary humans. Bryce came into my life probably around this time last year, and I have never regretted saying yes to a group, to people more so than the work that we've been doing here with Bryce and his amazing team at Inner Logic. So, Bryce, we are thrilled that you've joined us on this podcast. We'd love to know a little bit more about Inner Logic and a little bit more about you. So welcome.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yes, thank you for having me. I find when a new group starts a podcast, it's like the ultimate signal or test of trust because you have these goals, right, with your podcast and you're appealing to listeners and there's a lot on the line. So when you asked me to do the podcast, I was like, yeah, because I love to talk about what we're doing. But deeper than that, I was like, I think we really trust each other in this relationship.
Dean and Steve want to put me out into the world with their brand behind it. So thanks for trusting me to do that.
[00:05:15] Speaker C: Yeah, you're welcome. So tell us more about you and this amazing platform and organization and mission that you have to bring more data and cultural intelligence to the world.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So Interlogic was founded by myself and our co founder, Mike. And Mike and I met through our work with the Canadian Olympic team. We both worked with lots of different NSOs over the course of about two different Olympic cycles, and Mike works in data analytics, and I worked in the mental performance sports psychology space.
And we basically just kind of stumbled on this project together way, way back with Canoe Kayak, Canada, where we kind of put our left and right brains together and tried to predict national team performances at national team trials using social, emotional, and mental data points. So basically just set up a study over the course of about a year and a half where we gathered data primarily survey based information from athletes at different time points in the cycle. And we compared that to a different data set with their coaches, which was a question of do you think that this athlete performed as expected? Did they overperform or do they underperform? And there were specific bands that kind of represented those different buckets and it was really compelling. And so somewhere along that journey, we thought, like, I think this is a business, I think there's more going on here. But the individual unit of analysis was less of a focus for us at that point when we actually started the business, than the collective and just the health of the environment, the health of the space that the coaches and the NSO was creating. And we thought that was a really key predictor of performance. And it turns out it is not just in our work, but in the research as well. In team based organizations, culture accounts for up to about 47% of performance when measured properly. So we've got this really impactful KPI or key performance indicator that in most sport organizations really isn't being touched or measured and it's not being accounted for. And that opens up a whole bunch of risk just like anything else that is unaccounted for.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Bryce I was talking to a client last week and Interlogic came up in conversation and it was a client of yours who had actually gone through the Sport Culture Index and was hearing feedback from their board that this is not valid. How can you measure culture? It's not possible. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that comment.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: I think it's a naive comment, honestly. Sometimes people go to great lengths to kind of discredit some of the feedback that they receive. But I think there is a whole bunch of valid ways, and it's not us. We're not inventing something new, necessarily in terms of the diagnostic. We're not inventing anything particularly new. The IP and the things being measured are novel for our product.
But across thousands of definitions of culture that you could find across organizational and sport research, the thing that kind of cuts through all of those definitions with some stability is that culture is the shared experience of the people inside the organization. It's not some outside definition that you think people have in their minds, and it's not what you said it was by putting the words up on the wall.
It's what the people who live and breathe inside of it every day feel, and it's the way that they perceive it. And that's why culture is so difficult. So, yeah, I would say the one part of validity that's probably behind that statement is you can't measure culture like you can a bench press. And maybe that's like the starting point for people in sport. It's not as exact as that and it's not as isolated and individual, but you certainly can measure it and get way beyond whatever you were doing before, which is probably a very biased, gut feel.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that, Steve. And when I meet so called resistance or naysayers, that tells me something about the culture. And so as a culture coach, a leadership coach, I kind of lean into that and ask people, how do you know? So let's have a shared definition of what culture is. And then they kind of go, okay, well, I understand it is my lived experience inside this ecosystem called the board and or staff and or national team athletes and or the coaches. And when we get people to at least be open enough to share that kind of experience and we ask them, to what extent do you believe measuring the relationships between each other, in what ways do you think that can help you work better together? And then we've got all of a sudden a pause. They lean in. And what I would offer is it's only been about what, ten years or so, maybe 15, where we've normalized gathering financial statements through audited financial statements in sport. And when we compare audited financial statements to a cultural audit, people start to lean in a little bit more and are curious about in what ways can we use this data to address some of the risks that are already there, and more importantly, to leverage the strengths that the culture is experiencing that they may not be taking full advantage of. So when we work with our clients that way, some of the fear dissipates, some of the resistance dissipates, and we can be open to learning from what is already there. It's not like we're going to reveal something that isn't already there.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: If I was in the room, and I have been in the room lots of times where that kind of I'll call it curiosity, that stream of curiosity starts to occur. And I think the best place to start is to say, well, okay, let's back up by show of hands, who thinks that culture is a strong indicator of certain outcome in this environment?
And I don't think you get in many rooms where hands stay down on that question. And if they do stay down, you have probably some leadership problems at that level where people are saying, yeah, culture doesn't matter. You're literally defying the ODS, right? You're going against hundreds of years of cultural science. So if you start at a place of like, does it matter? Does it affect what we're trying to do here? And most people are on board, the natural next question is like, so what do we want to do with that then? Because it's pretty uncommon to have something that's so impactful be so unregulated.
That's just not normal in other facets of sport, of life, of business, of anything. So we have to start somewhere and we want to help people start.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: So, Bryce, you've probably heard several times as we all have as we read the newspapers or read online. I guess newspapers are hard to still read a newspaper.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Steve.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Good to know that the word being thrown around within the sports sector is bad culture. Unhealthy culture needs a cultural change. So how can Interlogic help with that question?
[00:12:35] Speaker A: I would even throw in the word toxic, that's one that's been thrown around quite a bit as well. It's like anything else. I mean, most really informed and productive change starts with a really good awareness of where you are right now. That's true on an individual level in the self awareness research and space, and it's true on a group level as well. So for one, if a word like toxic or problematic or whatever is being thrown around, I would say the true facts on that would be maybe. Or maybe that's just the opinion of a squeaky wheel that had a really bad experience, and that's not good either. That's something that should be addressed. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a systemic trend inside of that environment. When you can create a really effective way of capturing reliable and valid information on something, you build up the self awareness to move forward in a targeted or intentional way so that, you know, whatever you're implementing is for a real purpose and could have a real change. And if you were to remeasure it later, that you would see that people's perceptions and experiences have grown or shifted over time. And we like to say to people, primarily the leaders, but I guess, generally speaking, the organizations that we work with, that our goal is for you to get back a culture report that you would be surprised at a gap. We want to put you in a state where you go, I can't believe that that is still a cultural gap for us or a challenge for us because of all the work we did in that area to make it better. That really surprises me. Now, you're always subject to some surprises when you put a whole bunch of complex individual people in a high pressure environment. But we want to build confidence with the organizations that we work with so that they're not living with blind spots all over the place, and when they get a score that doesn't represent what they want, they go, Geez, the plan must not have worked. Versus, well, of course, we've never done anything in that space. We've never talked about psychological safety in this environment.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I really appreciate that, Bryce. And what I would say as someone who's been socializing the tool over the last year, what our clients most appreciate is there's this vacuum of cultural data. They have these perceptions. And as we know, perception is reality for people. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we perceive it to be. So the culture index is giving people some data that helps them make better decisions and can either confirm affirm or helps them substantiate maybe something that they felt in their gut. So for that reason, I would say it is invaluable because now as leadership coaches, we can better support our clients in addressing this. And I would say one of the things that we help our clients with is then once they receive the data and they've had a chance to analyze it, it's then to share it with the people who contributed to the data itself, the respondents in the survey. And that has been a game changer. I've had conversations with people because my name is usually the one where people can call and ask me questions. Sometimes people are concerned about confidentiality and what are you going to be doing with this? So when they receive the findings, they find it refreshing that the organizational leaders are actually walking the talk with respect to being open and transparent and more importantly, this affirmation to say, and here's what we're going to do about it. So that fosters trust. And as we know, trust is the one thing that can change everything. So for those who don't really know some of the Pragmatic things around the culture index, I'm curious, Bryce, can you actually just walk us through what this is so our listeners can understand?
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. It kind of just built on what you just said. Actually, what we try and create is an indexing methodology that asks really good questions.
And the reason for that is because that's what most people respond really well to. As an example, yesterday, Dina, we had a session where you took Mike and I through the Nova Profile.
And weeks in advance of that you had sent us the Nova Profile results and we opened them and we looked at them and we got some information out of it. But on the call you probably asked half a dozen, maybe more game changing questions that just make you think a lot deeper about what's going on. People respond to that. They want to be asked something that digs into the true experience that they have. And in sport, there's been a massive neglect for this practice and it's mostly out of protection, protection for people's jobs and really toxic reasons for that. But what we try and do with this tool is put together a whole bunch of really good questions in really targeted specific areas relating to the culture of a sport program or a sport environment. And we create a safe space for athletes, coaches, staff, anyone in the organization at all who should be involved in answering those questions. And we want that process to be kind of an AHA moment for them where they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy my organization is finally being curious about this thing because for years no one seemed to care whether or not I feel safe sharing my ideas. For years no one seemed to be asking questions about how we handle resilience if we're supported through times of hardship and stress, and what could we do better in those areas. So this is just a safe place for people to provide feedback, albeit anonymously, through the process.
And then we provide reports and dashboards and data and a summary, an executive summary of what story that data tells to the organization so that they can go, well, you know what?
We're not here to boil the ocean necessarily, but there is three things that we need to get way better at. And now we have a reason. We have an impetus from the voice of the people who we need to be committed to this organization to make that change. And so that's obviously a really important step of the process.
So that's essentially what the Sport Culture Index is designed to do. And obviously there's a whole bunch of technology behind how that works, but that's kind of the boring stuff. But that's the more human and emotional experience of it.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Bryce and Dina, this is a two part question, maybe for the two of you having worked in collaboration together over the last couple years.
So we do the research, we get the data, and then, of course, the question is now what? So how do does sport law and interlogic help organizations tackle the bigger risks that are weighing them down?
[00:19:33] Speaker A: I think you should go first because I'm going to say something really ambitious, and not that you're not, but you're going to share more.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: Oh, now we've got experience.
It's reminding me of the conversations, the early conversations when we were getting to know each other, and I was like, Wait, what it's like? He's talking about Sportopia.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: I'm going to swing for the fences on this one.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: So, all right, you go first.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: And I feel like people are going to really resonate with what you say. And then I'll go and be like, what just happened?
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Okay, beautiful. Well, I want to nod, maybe give a nod to the early leaders, right? The sport organizations that said yes to the dress before they even knew what they were really saying yes to. And so I'm talking about Canada snowboard and swim, BC and swim, Nova Scotia, the entire province of sport Manitoba through Janet's leadership. I mean, these are organizations who said yes, I think in part because there's such high trust, and more importantly, they felt it in their bones. As extraordinary leaders, there's a gap in information. And when I work with organizations, I help them decomplexify situations by looking at, well, what's the data? We can be really observant of that. And then how do we transfer data into information? And then how do we transfer that to knowledge? And then a shared experience called wisdom. So if you follow the track, moving from data where it's kind of like pure science, the numbers, I, as a leadership coach, can better help them, accompany them in mitigating risks and helping them fulfill their mission and vision in alignment with their values. And until you came into my life, Bryce, and Mike and your team, I had created this platform for living our values through my research, the four I framework where we were looking at to what extent are the organizations living their values and shared language is the language of culture, right? So we express culture through these values and what these leaders were saying to me is these values matter to us, but how do we know that our people are living them? So when you came to me with this beautiful idea around measuring culture with some precision, I can plot that on my four eye framework as evidence of us keeping our promises as leaders, right? Through the use of the sport Culture index. Now we have data that, with the support of a coach, we can transform into shared wisdom by leaning into the data, by being curious about it, by owning the fact that we have some issues, some risks that we want to mitigate, and as importantly, that we've got these hotspots that are actually leverage points that we didn't maybe know about. So I would say our clients are leaning in, those that are ready and we're predicting that those stories, those case studies are going to help inspire others to do the same before too long. Over to you, Bryce.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so much wrapped up in this really concise question. I've walked into a couple rooms in different organizations only to have leaders say, well, you know, our culture here is so good, I don't think we need this. Just go ask around. And I'm saying, well, that's what I'm asking you to do.
And right away my antennas go out. It's kind of like fish discover water last mindset where it's like you don't even recognize the water you're swimming around in because you lack the vulnerability to do so. And I think that statement of like things are so good here, it's a sign that they're kind of unwilling to really know what's going on and there's a deep vulnerability that comes with really finding out. And so when you walk into the opposite kind of room and know very forward thinking and like I think of a Michael Bartlett from Canada basketball and instantly just leaning in, I want to know. I have to know. It's my responsibility to know and to do this in a systematic way, not just me walking into a board meeting and saying things are great. I want to be better than that.
That is the sign that if it's not great today, that it will be great in the future because there's a vulnerability associated with that. And this leads me to the more explicit answer to your question, Steve. When people say, now what? Wow, we've got this data, now what?
It's actually an amazing signal in and of itself because what we've showed them is, hey, there's a space that's evidence based in the area of culture that you should grow in based on this data. And they're saying, now what? What that tells me is we actually don't really know how. We don't know what to do in the space, which is what led us here in the first place. And with a vulnerable leader, an open leader, you can say, this is actually a really good thing. You don't need to say, now, what, with tension. You don't need to say it with, like, fear. You can say it with opportunity.
You can say it with growth, because if you had all the answers, then we probably wouldn't need to have got this metric in the first place. It's a really, really great moment to say, okay, culture is really hard, and the fact that you're not 100% sure what to do here is a really great sign. So let's move on it. Now. The reason and you explained a whole bunch of stuff really well, Dina hotspots, which is a great phrase because it literally is a heat map that shows you red areas. But the reason I said I wanted to say something really ambitious is I think this is actually the biggest gap in the culture space, not just in sport, but in general. If you think about these three stages, stage one being diagnose and I don't like to use a medical term, but you have to diagnose what's really going on with accuracy in the moment.
That's not novel. So from a business perspective, we're looking at that and going, well, you can use technology to make it more novel. You can take a novel approach to diagnosing and do a better job kind of leveraging data, and that's great, but it's not novel in and of itself. There's a company called Qualtrics that just sold today for, like, $40 billion or something like that, because that's what they do. They just run a premium survey business, essentially, right now, what is novel is getting from that diagnosis. So the origin of your question, Steve, from that diagnosis, that line in the sand of, like, here's where we are, to meaningful change in an efficient and accurate way. And if you ask most organizations, they'll give you an answer to that question that's synonymous with moving a cruise ship. The time frame between diagnosis and action without really high end expert help like Sport Law as an example, is a really long time. And even with a group like Sport Law or any other group, it tends to be really expensive. People are investing a lot of money to try and get from diagnosis to the design of a really great plan. Now, the third step of that is to actually deliver results. So to know for sure that this intervention had an impact on something. Now, whether that's a more performance oriented result or whether that's sort of a precursor to that performance oriented result like just Straight Up Well Being or Something like Retention, like People Just Staying Around because They're Having A Great Experience.
Those next two steps are really, really hard, and they're a huge gap in the space. And our business is excited about that gap. And this is where the ambitious comes in, is because AI can actually play a huge role in filling it. And this is a very non human comment with some of the most human people I know. And I recognize that.
But imagine if we could provide instantaneously designed, high quality action plans to organizations as soon as the diagnostic finishes. That's supported by a knowledge base from people like Dina and Steve. So if we can capture the essence of what you do and get them moving 50 60% of the way down the line to say, here's what you have to start doing without taking four months to get there, that's what our business is really, really excited about. But right now it's a very arduous task where people have to be heavily involved and hands on. And we see five years out that we can help people move with precision a lot faster.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: That's a good segue. Bryce to my last question for you. Is there any new and exciting initiatives that you'd like to share with our listeners that are coming in the future?
[00:28:29] Speaker A: That's a huge one.
This Year for US, like, 2023 is about Building up A Knowledge Base, and the Knowledge Base is the combination of and dina, you're going to get A phone Call from Me on this this week. The knowledge base is a combination of picking the brains of world leading experts in certain areas and gathering that knowledge and also gathering the knowledge of the research itself. And you guys have probably heard of this great tool chat GPT-3. And so we have a plugin for that in our system now where we can take a look at a whole bunch of different data sets. And based on the diagnostics, something comes out and it produces this plan for you that says, here's the plan. And this knowledge base is based on these three articles and Dina and Steve and Bryce and Judy as an example. That's where we got the information to build your plan. So for know Picturing, that future where people go, it's not just an AI driven plan. It's an AI driven plan that's supported by a knowledge base that I trust. It's just happening faster. And if we want Dina to be involved, we need 20% of Dina. We don't need 180% of Dina between now and then. So it's a big play, but we're super excited about this concept of scaling really high quality holistic cultures across sport and across business.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: I love it. And I love it because I remember I was on a stage doing a keynote at the Youth Sport AGM last year. Bryce and you and Mike were in the audience. And I remember putting. Up a slide that said Peter Drucker says culture is eating strategy for breakfast. And then my next slide was culture is eating sport for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You remember?
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:19] Speaker C: And I'm smiling because as you're saying, this is going to reduce the amount of work that comes our way. That's music to our heart because Steve and I will tell you that we want to do better quality work. We trust there's always going to be work for good people. What we want to do is ensure that our clients are resourced, that they have really sound data to be able to make informed decisions that are in alignment with their values. And if we can do that and communicate the so what to our clients in an open and transparent way, the culture is going to thrive. And when we thrive, we stay. And when we stay, we perform. So thank you, Bryce, to you and your amazing leadership team at Interlogic. We will definitely do a part two because I can already people saying, well, you didn't get into the specifics like the 3ft off the ground. We have some blogs and some information that people can find out more. You can go visit our
[email protected] or Sportlaw CA for the details around this extraordinary tool.
Thank you for being with us here today. To learn more about how your organization can begin the journey of cultural change and implementing the Sport Culture Index, you can check out the blogs that I've referenced that are going to be linked in the episode Notes below. A significant thank you to our guest and friend Bryce Tully who has shared invaluable insights about the Sport Culture Index and how to kickstart meaningful cultural change in sport. You can learn more about Bryce and inner logic in the episode Notes below.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Thank you for listening. We look forward to not only sharing our vision of Sportopia, but also collaborating with our community to elevate sport. To have your say in Sportopia, email us at hello at Sportlaw CA or on social media at sportlawca to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for our next episode.
