#487 How to Fix Your Workplace Culture: Mel Blackwell in Conversation with Niels Brabandt on Accountability, Ownership and the Best Pledge
How to Fix Your Workplace Culture: Mel Blackwell in Conversation with Niels Brabandt on Accountability, Ownership and the Best Pledge
Workplace culture is often discussed in abstract language: values, engagement, purpose, belonging. Yet for many professionals, the lived experience feels closer to what Mel Blackwell calls the Wild West of business. In this in-depth conversation with Niels Brabandt, Mel Blackwell offers a practical and unapologetically disciplined framework for repairing dysfunctional workplace cultures.
Drawing on decades of C-suite experience and organisational turnarounds, Mel Blackwell argues that culture is both top down and deeply personal. Senior leadership sets the tone, but transformation happens one individual at a time. Culture does not improve through slogans. It improves when individuals commit to being the best version of themselves and demand the same of their teams.
At the centre of Mel Blackwell’s philosophy is what he calls the Best Pledge. It is not a corporate initiative. It is a personal commitment. Leaders and employees alike must define their own standard of excellence and hold themselves accountable to it. According to Mel Blackwell, mediocrity persists not because people lack talent, but because organisations tolerate diluted standards.
Niels Brabandt challenges a common hesitation: what if you are not the chief executive, but one of hundreds of managers within a large organisation? Can culture be influenced from the middle? Mel Blackwell’s answer is clear. While structural change requires leadership commitment, cultural energy spreads virally. Individuals who consistently operate at their highest standard create momentum that influences peers and, over time, senior decision-makers.
The discussion turns to the creation of a problem-solving culture. Too often, organisations reward escalation rather than resolution. Problems travel upwards, overwhelming leadership and disempowering frontline teams. Mel Blackwell proposes a simple but transformational rule. When presenting a problem, attach a proposed solution. This approach pushes accountability closer to where issues originate and encourages professional maturity.
A powerful metaphor underpins his thinking. Leaders are shepherds. They protect their teams from external threats and internal dysfunction. They remove obstacles. They create room for growth. Crucially, they allow mistakes. Mel Blackwell’s formative lesson, summarised in the phrase if you are not wrecking, you are not riding, underscores the necessity of controlled failure in professional development. Without room to err, employees cannot expand capability.
For decision-makers in business, the implications are significant. Micromanagement, over-control and fear-based compliance suppress initiative. By contrast, a culture where individuals do their job, support colleagues and take ownership of outcomes fosters resilience and innovation.
The interview also confronts an uncomfortable truth. Not every organisation rewards excellence. In some environments, striving for higher standards may generate resistance. Mel Blackwell advises professionals to assess whether their workplace aligns with their values and ambitions. While economic realities sometimes require endurance, sustained cultural misalignment erodes both performance and well-being.
Throughout the conversation, Niels Brabandt ensures that abstract principles translate into actionable leadership behaviours. Remove obstacles. Clarify expectations. Hold people accountable with fairness. Stand beside teams in failure and elevate them in success.
Fixing workplace culture is not an overnight intervention. It is a disciplined commitment to ownership, accountability and continuous improvement. As Mel Blackwell and Niels Brabandt demonstrate, culture changes when leaders and individuals choose to pony up and perform at their best.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Company culture, corporate culture, and your workplace. And when you now think, "Ugh, that's basically the place where I don't want to be at all," then you're exactly right where we are here today. We have an expert exactly on how to fix your workplace with us here today. Hello and welcome, Maël Blackwell.
Mel Blackwell
Thank you, Nils. It's happy to be here.
Niels Brabandt
Thank you very much for taking the time. So you wrote the book about how pretty much people can fix their workplace, the uncommon sense. While most people say you need common sense, you say uncommon sense, how to fight to fix your workplace culture and the Wild West of business. And probably, most likely anyone will say, "Yeah, Wild West pretty much is what it is." the question is, how can they fix it when they say, "Well, maybe I am not the CEO, I'm not the senior executive, so I can't fix it," or, "Or can I?" What's your take on that?
Mel Blackwell
Yeah. Well, it's a loaded question because I do believe that the onus is on the senior leadership and the middle management to create that culture. But I believe the way you get a dynamic culture is one person at a time. And that's by encouraging people to be the best version of themselves and then encouraging everyone together. Hey, let's do the best work we've ever done together right here, right now in our career. And so it is. It is transformational. It is top down, but it has to bounce.
Mel Blackwell
And so everybody, anyone who's in leadership can can take that mantle and start pushing their bosses to say, "Let's live up to the things you guys tell us every day." Right? So your standards, your your core values, your mission statements, these are things that if they resonate with you, you enjoy working there, but then you hold each other accountable.
Mel Blackwell
So that is an element in uncommon sense. And it is kind of uncommon sense, right? It's common sense that we quit using, and therefore it's become uncommon. But I believe that best pledge in my book would be where that person should go. And it starts with me, right? I want to do I want to be my best self at work and at home and in my community. And I want to work for people that want to do the same thing. And then if we join together and say, "Hey, let's do something special. We believe in this vision. Let's get on the same side of the rope and let's try to do something special at work."
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, I think that's really powerful. Also, I, of course, when when we got in touch, I, of course, looked at your CV. I mean, you've you've been there, you've done that, you've you've been in the C-suite, senior executive, etc. So you are talking about something you've done by yourself.
Niels Brabandt
When you now say it's important to create a problem-solving culture, many people, and of course, when I prepared for this interview, they said, "Look, I see certain problems, and as soon as I address them, the thank you notice, I get them on my table and I have more work to do than ever before and when I don't fix them, I get blamed for not fixing it." So how, in your opinion, does a problem-solving culture really look like?
Mel Blackwell
I thought you addressed this well in your Toxic podcast. So it's it's these things are not always and never true. Right. And so I, you know, I try to be provocative to get people to think, to work together, what I call on the same side of the rope. And so, you know, if you think of a tug of war in business, sometimes you feel a resistance.
Mel Blackwell
So the problem-solving culture starts with one simple rule. And most of what I learned, Nils, was because I was I was screwing things up, trying to figure out how to unwind what I didn't do right when I was young. And I came up with a philosophy that if someone could bring me a problem, I would ask them, "Take a little more time and attach a solution to it." So it became transformational. I tried it and it changed the culture. And I was like, "Wow, people are hungry to solve the problems that they should." And this was to your point, they shouldn't have to solve the problems somebody else should solve.
Mel Blackwell
And so it starts with this random concept of only do your job. And if you think about the best teams, you and I were talking a little bit about ice. I can think about the best teams. Every player does their job. Now, they will cover for each other and they'll help someone recover if they slip. But in the end, the most powerful culture is the one where nobody's doing anyone else's job, but everyone's doing their job. And so the problem-solving culture is simply to try to figure out how to get the problems pushed down as close to where they exist as possible.
Mel Blackwell
And I have a concept that I call the Good Shepherd. Right. So if you read Uncommon Sense, it sounds like, "Wow, this guy's kind of tough," but it's only as a shepherd. The shepherd is tough when he's dealing with the wolves or a sheep that's like, "Hey, you're going to get hurt if I don't help you," or "You've gotten lost. Let me help you." So he's tough sometimes. That's why I call it the Wild West.
Mel Blackwell
But if you allocate problems to be solved in the business as close to where they resolve reside as possible, people become empowered. And they and here's the thing, though, you have to remove the obstacles for them. Because if I have the power, that's my job. So I hand you a problem or you bring me a problem with a solution. And I'm like, "Nils, go do that." So there are three things you have to do in that culture. One is you have to remove obstacles, which include red tape, other people resisting it, people in the business that would try to sabotage toxic people.
Mel Blackwell
But the other thing is you have to allow them to make mistakes. So I have a concept in my book that my brother taught me when we were kids called, "If you're not wrecking, you're not riding." And we learned that riding motorcycles. And he was older than me. So he would wreck and come back so happy. And I was four years younger and I would be like, "My gosh, you wrecked Uncle Roland's motorcycle." You know, and he would get off his motorcycle, fix the handlebars and get back on and look at me, kind of like Ricky Bobby in that Talladega Nights movie. Yeah. And he looked at me and said, "Mel, if you're not wrecking, you're not riding." And I was like, "He's crazy." Yeah. But in business, in business, it's true. But you have to create a culture where people can make mistakes. You're mentoring them, they recover and they grow. And so that's a long picture of how you create a problem-solving culture.
Niels Brabandt
So that probably.
Mel Blackwell
The reason you do it, Nils.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah.
Mel Blackwell
So the reason you do it real simple is because if problems flow up, you might be succeeding in business, but you're choking. Right. You're choking your bosses and it's their fault. They should push the problems down and help you help you remove obstacles and solve them.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, absolutely. So that probably goes against the idea of what some people think that as a leader, you have to be strong. You have to be telling people what to do. You have to check in every day or every other day what they're doing. You have to control them. You have to get them back in the office all the every single day. You would say that's not an up-to-date leadership culture.
Mel Blackwell
I would think that the I think that where I might could help people is is your role. The higher you go in an organization, you're a shepherd. And the more you give, the more freedom you give to grow, the more responsibility you give away, the more credit you give away, the more times that when they fail, you stand beside them. When they succeed, you push them out front. And that's more of a shepherd's mindset. And so the more they can do on their own, the more you can do your job.
Mel Blackwell
And that's where if you come back to a couple of things, I'm going to do my job. I'm not going to do anybody else's job. Everybody in the business can say that, but we are going to cover for each other. And then secondly, we're going to remove obstacles and take care of people and give them some room, give them some.
Mel Blackwell
If you don't let people I'll tell you a quick story. When I was a little kid, the reason the way these things happened to me was that I lived something and I thought, how can I create language to communicate this to people? Because I was always into stress cultures or startups. So people might listen to me or read my book and go, "Wow, this is a my business is not nearly this disruptive or my business doesn't have as many people struggling and fighting over things."
Mel Blackwell
But for me, I walked in and somebody said, "Hey, I can't. My business is in a disruptive state. What can I do?" But when I was a kid, I would try to keep up with my brother on my bicycle, just a little bicycle. And when my chain came off, I couldn't put my chain back on. And so my brother would come back, put the chain back on because he wanted to hurry and then I could ride again. Well, I was not growing.
Mel Blackwell
Okay. It was very kind of him to come put my chain back on, but I didn't. What he did one day is he came back and said, "Watch me. I'm only going to do this one more time. Yeah, you need to learn how to put your chain back on." Now I put my chain back on and I developed freedom. I could I could go now. Then guess what happened? I could go further and get lost in the woods.
Mel Blackwell
So so those those every time you solve a problem and grow, you just grow into a bigger, more capable problem. And I think that's our role in business is to develop people. Yeah. And I think that's what we should do.
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely. What would you now say if someone says, because there's one chapter which you call creating a pony-up culture. When someone else says, "Look, I work in this huge corporation. Who am I here to say I am going to change?" And I'm probably one of 400 managers in this huge organization. When I now suddenly change, maybe they just take me out of the equation. Suddenly, what would be your your your take on that? That approach. If someone says, "I think I just can't change it. It just is as it is."
Mel Blackwell
Well, first of all, I really like your the way you approach things, because I do think you fight for those people and I think it's valiant. It's tough. You have to stand for something, and that's what the pony-up culture is. And if you are working in a culture where being your best self is punished, then I think you have to circle back to yourself and say, "Do I do I really want to settle to work here?" You know, but sometimes you have to. We need our jobs. I've stayed in jobs before I hated because I couldn't. You know, I had kids. I had I had to do things. And so I think you do the most you can.
Mel Blackwell
There's an old saying by a gentleman, Art Williams, that was one of my mentors, and he was an interesting guy. And I won't go into him, but he always said, "All you can do is all you can do, and all you can do is enough." But he was the hardest, toughest guy. He didn't settle for anything. He was the most excellent driving human being. But deep down inside, he knew that when you get the most from somebody, it's enough.
Mel Blackwell
And in the season, sometimes people can't do as much. If you're if you're recovering from surgery, if your parents have died, if you've just had a child, you might be somewhat distracted. And so whatever someone's going through, like you're saying, I think you go and you apply the best pledge to yourself. I will be the best person I can be, the best version of myself. And that's personal. My version of what's best is not your version. So we're not talking about me putting my values on someone, but based on your definition of your very best self, be the best dad, be the best mom, be the best spouse, be the best in community, be the best at work, be the best coworker.
Mel Blackwell
If you do that, it's unreal how it ripples because people are hungry for that. I became a best practice warrior because as the only way I could survive in these distressed environments is to try to get the best from everybody so that we could get out of mediocrity. Yeah, but you don't do it by hammering them. You do it by building this this viral thing. And so I guess what you do in that scenario is you do the most you can, and you may have to assess in my career, should I go find more people that want to do their best? Yeah. Are they holding me back? You know, but it's tough.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. And that is your best pledge, which you also describe in the book, right? The best pledge.
Mel Blackwell
It is. Yeah, it is. And it's funny, Nils, on that, I used it for 20 years and didn't call it anything. And then as I was writing the book, I said, "I've got to figure out what I did." And I'm like, "This was the best pledge." And so I trademarked it. Yeah.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. It's a really powerful chapter. This, this, this, this book in as a whole is really powerful. So when now people say, "Hey, I think Mel can be really of help for us," either, for example, as a consultant or as a speaker for a conference or in any other way, when they want to reach out to you, how can they get in touch?
Mel Blackwell
Well, if you go to MelBlackwell.com, you can you can actually click a button there to get on my calendar and we can have a 30-minute call, just a discovery call. I don't charge for that. And on there as well, you can ping me for anything, speaking or whatever. And I'm glad to help. Yeah.
Niels Brabandt
I think these are the perfect final words. So you see, when you have a workplace culture where you say, "Poly we should do something about that," read the book, get in touch with Mel. These are the perfect final words. Mel, thank you very much for your time.
Mel Blackwell
Thank you, Nils.