How to improve culture at pace and scale

Introduction

Our most workable definition of culture is: It’s the way we do things around here. We think the ‘do’ needs to be ‘DO’. Less talk, more DO.

Our framework for creating a high-performance culture is Empathise, Energise, Optimise:

• Empathise – understanding your people, making them feel involved and valued
• Energise – putting improvement initiatives in place… and swiftly
• Optimise - constantly fine-tuning to drive high-performance culture

We work with organisations on our seven-stage process.

• Stage 1: The comms campaign - obtaining the understanding and buy-in from employees
• Stage 2: Culture Audit (corporate) - listening via focus groups, interviews, and spending time with employees
• Stage 3: Culture Audit (team and personal) - using mojo to understand team and individual data, including what drives them
• Stage 4: Instant impact - an immediate, wide-ranging activity to signal that things will, indeed, be changing for the better
• Stage 5: Purpose & Values - either creating, re-working, or evaluating these
• Stage 6: The Culture Playbook - The 'how-to' guide to embedding high-performance culture
• Stage 7: Creating a frictionless employee experience - continuing and fine-tuning activities from the Energise phase and introducing new activities which the Culture Audit points to being required

Stage 1: The comms campaign

The first task is to ensure that employees are aware of the initiative; it’s aims, and expectations of them, to build excitement and engagement. So, you should create a campaign identity to include the messaging and look and feel. The deliverables - for pre, during and post initiative - can include: CEO communications, videos, progress updates; maybe even a town hall.

Of the change initiatives that fail, most do so due to poor comms. Don’t fail at the first hurdle!

Stage 2: Culture Audit (corporate)

This involves desk research, interviews, focus groups with different employee groups, and spending time with the frontline, to ascertain current state and desired future state corporate culture.

It should also include our Culture Health Index. Delivered via a survey, ‘CHI’ zones in on the eight dimensions of culture and makes clear where organisations are currently strong and in need of improvement. For fans of ENPS, this is also covered.

A common mistake is to only ask senior leaders for their thoughts. But are they truly representative of the whole organisation?

Stage 3: Culture Audit (team and personal)

We recommend using our mojo tool to understand team and individual requirements. The results will make clear:

• What really motivates employees in your teams
• Current motivation levels
• Any gaps or potential tensions within teams

Stage 4: Instant impact

Earlier, we talked about the 'DO'. Mojo can also help with supporting a high-performance culture by:

·        Understanding who in a team is up for change and who may be more resistant

·        Learning how to build action plans for improvements, based upon the individual motivations of your employees

·        Managers to be coached on how to hold effective one-to-one conversations with your employees and on how to improve team dynamics through creating an environment of psychological safety, trust and empowerment

The mojo package includes:

• Four mojo maps per employee per year
• Line manager training
• Team on-boarding
• Quarterly check-ins

This is ‘DO’ in action. Not just talk but a tool to instantly drive that all-important continuous improvement.

Stage 5: Purpose & Values

These are the bedrocks of your culture and so it's vital that they're relevant and meaningful. Your purpose is your 'why' and your values are your 'how'. These half-day workshops can either support the creation of a fresh set or review your current set.

Hint: if your current values include 'Integrity' or 'Teamwork' then they will need bringing into the modern era!

Module 1: Purpose

• What is purpose and why it matters
• Reviewing / Crafting a company purpose
• Testing your purpose
• How to create team and personal purposes

Module 2: Values

• What are values and why they matter
• Connecting values to the purpose
• Reviewing / Crafting company values
• Testing the values
• How to cascade them across an organisation.

Stage 6: The Culture Playbook

This will be your guide to culture moving forward.

The playbook includes:

• The story of how your people changed your culture
• Purpose
• Values 
• How to use them/talk about them
• How to embed the dimensions of culture into your day-to-day

Stage 7: Creating a frictionless employee

Data is the new gold, so once the above work has been concluded then it needs to be packaged into a report. This includes:

• CHI data
• Mojo data
• Key findings from interviews and focus groups
• Actionable recommendations for improvements

If you complete the above, then you’ll have a complete picture of your current culture and be able to swiftly make tens and tens of improvements.

Do get in touch if you’d like more information on how we can support you to create a people-first culture at pace and scale.

Contact: nicholas@brandexperiences.com or use the contact form at the bottom of this page.