Culture shift
“Culture is strategy, strategy is culture.”
Mark Watson
The Watson Practice creates the set up and support for leadership team conversations that bond them with the culture they are creating in the everyday experiences of their customers and employees. In many ways we help the leaders to rehearse their behaviours in a safe environment.
Much more than words
Word smithing the ways a business describes its values or principles (arguably the foundations of a culture) can be important in terms of providing the consistent strands for large scale communication to employees and supporting brand development work, but this is often distracting and can be destructive when the executive team get involved!
Using the descriptors of a culture, we build and facilitate leadership team conversations on real business activities that lead to practical, noticeable changes in how people experience the business – starting with the leadership team.
How leaders choose to behave is directly linked to and has a huge impact on the culture of the business. The leadership team need to be comfortable and consistently articulate around culture to be able to effect positive development of the culture.
“Culture is a set of living relationships working towards a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It is something you do.”
Dan Coyle ‘The Culture Code’
In practice…
The way we create change determines the change that results.
Conversations on culture should always focus on what is perceived to be real and practical. For example – ‘How would we (the leaders) create a great place to work?’ ‘What do we need to act on?’ ‘How do we expect to change the ways we behave?’ How could we make business planning more fun?
In a professional service firm we worked with the leadership team to engage their partners in culture changes through gamifying the approach to business planning. Designed to be led by all partners, the 'Game of Plans' approach engaged everyone across the firm. The outcomes – ownership and buy-in to business plans, a greater sense of fun (in a dry environment) and improved employee engagement in a more collaborative way of working.