About Cultivated Management

Curious. Caring. Creative. Thinking Critically. Cultivated Management helps leaders and managers envision, dream and design bright futures, and communicate with clarity to bring them to life.

The future belongs to those who can communicate about it.

Home to creative thinking, curiosity, care, communication and critical thinking, Cultivated Management helps leaders and managers design and envision a bright future and move their organisations towards it.

We believe all organisations should serve society and enrich the lives of all who work in them. There should be no contention between achieving business results and creating a rewarding workplace, yet many companies get this wrong.

Quiet quitting, the mass resignation, low engagement, burnout, overload, overwhelm; they all hint at a lack of meaning, joy, connection, clarity, alignment and hope for a better future in work.

We believe work is an essential human need, and that business can be a force for good with regards to climate, economy and social equality. It all starts with designing and envisioning a better future, communicating with clarity, and then moving people into action to bring it to life - all while creating a business that is a joy to work in.

“The ideal business is composed of managers and dreamers, and it is the responsibility of the former to protect the latter.”

--Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid

Using envisioned futures, physical design, effective communication, deep study, learning, storytelling, immersive workshops and helpful models & tools, we help business leaders navigate the uncertain, precarious and changeable world.

Cultivated Management was founded by Rob Lambert, a Media Scientist, HR professional and experienced business leader, with the goal of helping business leaders and managers to unlock the human potential within the business.

Our business practice has three core strands:

1. The learning portal on this website with articles, the "Here's an idea worth playing with" podcast, the "Meeting Notes" newsletter, books and the communication Super Power online workshop, for those who wish to cultivate themselves.
2. Consulting, training, immersive workshops and energising talks for clients, conferences and business.
3. A research, design, creative exploration and learning studio, where ideas are formed, prototype are created, research is conducted and art is mixed with business.

All of our work is couched in a "futures communication thinking" model that we call "Releasing Business Agility", and it all starts with a clear painted picture of a bright future.

We help leaders envision, prototype, model, critique and bring clarity to this bright future, whilst thinking critically about the consequences and effects.

We lean into the current reality, problems, obstacles and goals to form a robust strategy. We then help leaders and managers to align and mobilise their people around this future goal; in a sense helping to connect the current "me" to the future "me".

Dreaming, envisioning and designing the future is essential but bringing it to life requires effective communication behaviours; listening and engaging, leading, storytelling, clarity, alignment and feedback loops.

Effective communication requires diversity, critical thinking, truth, authenticity, clarity, excellent listening, competency and purpose.

"All problems are interpersonal problems" - Alfred Adler

Cultivated Management has been helping clients in telco, mobile, oil and gas, energy, professional services and finance for over 10 years now. The founder, Rob Lambert, has held various roles including Vice President of HR, Vice President of Software Engineering and Interim CIO. He is also an award winning communication trainer, writer, Media Scientist and experienced consultant and coach.

Hi, my name's Rob. Here's a few short snippets about me.

Short “About Rob” snippets

• Built a “frighteningly agile” team named “UK top start-ups to watch in 2017”.
• Built a team voted “Best companies to work for 3 years running”.
• Took the team (DevOps) from Investment to successful sale
• Vice President of HR
• Vice President of Engineering (twice)
• Vice President of Agility
• My HR Team was described as the ”least evil HR team ever” (A compliment I think)
• CIPD Level 5 HR practitioner
• Blogger, podcaster, keynote presenter, writer
• Former Editor and journalist
• Coach and trainer
• Author of several books on leadership, career management, management, agile and squirrels
• Husband and Father to three boys
• Media Scientist obsessed with mixed media storytelling – and fast cars

Values.

Creativity – creativity is a core value. We like to create, bring together seemingly disparate ideas and come up with new potential futures. If your company is exceptional, then creativity is essential to stand out. Why copy when you can create? If your company is exceptional, then you should be an exception...

Humour and Playfulness – tied to the above – there’s fun to be had. After all, if we’re not having fun with it – we should be done with it. Bright futures rarely manifest without energy, joy and engagement

Appreciation of Excellence – there is excellence all around. We often just need to learn to see it – and then appreciate it. Or create it.

Do no Harm – the advice and support provided through Cultivated Management should lead to no harm if you implement it. There’s some shady advice out there from people who are simply spouting theory – our advice is grounded in evidence.

Critical Thinking – We don't take theories and platitudes on face value. We apply a critical eye to get to the heart and essence. We test our own theories, futures and models.

Inclusivity – Rob is HR qualified and spent years as a VP in HR, we therefore blend a bias for action with a bias to cultivate great workplaces. Our work should also be accessible and relevant to a diverse audience. We make content for people from all walks of life – everyone.

Curiosity – at the heart of all we do is curiosity. Is there a better way to do something? How does this thing work? How can we get better? What futures are more interesting? Curiosity ripples through all that we share and do.

Accuracy – We show you how we do our work, how we come to conclusions, how we research and how we form these ideas we share. We use data where data exists. We aim to be accurate in all that we share.

Cultivated Charity

We believe ALL organisations exist to serve the greater purpose of society. Ours is no different.

We believe very strongly that every person (and animal) has the right to the best quality of life they can, even if that life may be short.

That’s why we donate 5% of all revenue from products and affiliate links to charity.

2.5% always goes to Naomi House – a hospice in Winchester for life-limited children and their parents.

The other 2.5% goes to a different charity each year.

• 2015 – Unicef (complete)
• 2016 – Pencils of Promise (complete)
• 2017 – Saving Linnea (complete)
• 2018 – WWF (complete)
• 2019 – Naomi House (complete) – Full 5% this year.
• 2020 – British Heart Foundation (complete)
• 2021 – Shelter Box (complete)
• 2022 – Naomi House (complete)
• 2023 – Become and Naomi House
• 2024 - TBD

Thank you for reading this far 😄