Five Years of MoreThanNow - An Anniversary Post
It’s 18th November 2021. MoreThanNow was founded 5 years ago today.
This is a personal ramble to mark the occasion.
I never wanted to be a business owner - still don’t, it’s the worst part of my job! I just couldn’t imagine being able to do the work I wanted to do in an organisation that already existed.
Five years later and MoreThanNow is still very niche. We conduct experiments on culture, change and decision-making in the workplace. So if you don’t want to put your intervention under that spotlight, we’re not for you. Because we won’t know whether our work had the impact you wanted, to the standard we aspire to and believe people deserve. It’s a relatively hard-line position, but we’ve stuck with it!
I came to behavioural science later in my career and was inspired by the long-term, collaborative vein that ran so strongly through the community. In 2017, I wrote that “the beauty of science is in the baton that passes from one generation to the next”. I really meant something closer to home.
In my previous ten years in the workplace, I was part of teams facing the same cultural problems over and over again, making no real progress and developing no real understanding of what was working and what wasn’t. I still think we’re obsessed with ‘transforming’ everything because in the absence of proper evaluation and therefore proper learning, there’s nothing else to do but start from scratch.
The name MoreThanNow came from an aspiration to change that. If we could conduct credible, scientific experiments within organisations, we would bring value to our partners today and leave something behind for others to develop in the future. Simply put, we would build on evidence from researchers before us and leave new evidence for those who come next.
There’s nothing new about this idea of course - it’s science! - the challenge for MoreThanNow was to bring it alive and kicking to cultural change in the workplace. It remains a joy and a privilege to contribute to that long-term vision every day.
Looking back on the past five years feels a bit overwhelming. It’s in my nature to feel dissatisfied unfortunately, so I have to start with what we haven’t achieved! When we began, our niche-ness felt like a badge of honour but now I see it as a bit of a failure. The power of experiments is only revealed at scale, when many people, places and sources share, develop and critique each other’s work. That we haven’t role-modelled an experimental approach in a way that has been widely adopted means we haven’t done our job at MoreThanNow. Not yet, anyway :)
There are, however, many things I’m delighted with – call them clues that we’re heading in the right direction! We’re a small team but we’ve run randomised controlled experiments with some of the largest and most influential organisations in the world, from big banks like Citi, to big pharmaceuticals like Novartis, to big tech like Ericsson. Together with our partners, we bring this method of evaluation to life in the real world, finding new ways to balance rigour and practicality that constantly keep us on our toes.
As it’s our anniversary, I’ll say out loud that this is not easy. We have done things that people haven’t done before. We’ve made things happen that are extraordinary in our field and in the organisations we work for. We should look back on those projects and partnerships with pride.
I’m equally happy about our academic collaborations. Some highlights from 2021 include our work on hybrid work and sustainability with the London School of Economics, on hybrid work and inclusion with the University of Exeter, or our experiments on Bias on LinkedIn or Time and Leadership with Nationwide Building Society. Before the year is out, we’ll have finished more trials on performance with Professor Oliver Hauser at Exeter and psychological safety with Professor Maria Guadalupe at INSEAD. And looking ahead, our 2022 experiment portfolio goes from strength to strength. We’ll continue to do everything we can to offer unique field opportunities for talented academics.
I’m as excited to continue our mission as I’ve ever been. And that’s about the nature of work and the people I work alongside everyday. Right from the start, this has been a shared journey. From the very early days with John, Enora and later Bex, to Sarah, Alanna and Mark, to the brilliant Zsofi, Zoe, Pieter, Laura, Oliver and Gus. You, alongside all our academic friends and organisational partners, are what keep MoreThanNow going.
Here’s to another five years!