Future-proofed culture
When we started Pecan, the general view was it takes five years to change workplace culture. With good insight enabling you to focus on the right things – it can be achieved much faster.
Culture is often described as ‘the way we do things around here’. But that is just the outcome – of values, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs on the one hand, and structures, policies and processes, physical environment, communications and behaviours on the other.
We get under the skin of your culture to understand how it is impacting delivery of your strategy and your ability to adapt to unpredictable changes in the external environment. What are the unwritten rules inhibiting or encouraging innovation? What are the blockers and enablers to implementing change successfully? What is required to unlock everyone’s potential?
It is always an evolution – keeping and reimagining the best of what you have, and redirecting, stopping and changing what is getting in the way.
Critical to evolving culture quickly is employee engagement – having everyone recognise current norms and the reasons behind them, and feeling involved in shaping the future organisation.
Future of work culture assessment
Every workplace culture has prevailing traits, similar to a personality. These are seldom exclusively positive or negative – they are simply ‘what is so’ – your current default.
We use a combination of interviews, focus groups, observation and a short survey to get under the skin of the way you do things, the causes, the impact on strategy delivery and your readiness for the future.
We create insight into
- Inherent strengths to preserve, build on and amplify
- Issues and challenges that are getting in the way
Using images, helps create instant recognition and instinctive ownership
Values and behaviours design
Organisations typically have two or three core values that lie at the heart of their DNA and these remain constant through time and changing conditions.
To succeed organisations often need to identify aspirational values. Ones that reflect essential future-fit traits. These need to be deliberately introduced and embedded into a culture.
We use a collaborative, engaging approach to
- Define your core and aspirational values
- Refresh core behaviours that are working and must be preserved
- Codify aspirational behaviours that need to be introduced
We create simple Playbooks giving everyone clarity on what is desired and what will no longer be tolerated.
We help you develop a Culture Embedding Plan using our Five Cultural Enablers framework. This ensures that everything from leadership role-modelling to people processes and communications are encouraging, supporting and celebrating your Values being lived.
Using colleagues’ everyday language captures the spirit of your organisation and makes the values and behaviours feel relevant.
Signature ways of working
All organisations have a small number of activities and core processes that are essential to their success. Embedding your Values, and associated mindset and behaviours through these key ways of working has your culture be fundamental to who you are, how you operate, and the experience you create for customers.
We help you identify no more than three initial signature ways of working (WOWs) and redesign them with your Values at their heart. This makes sure you practice what you preach and can make you distinctive from competitors.
They often require the development of key skills such as straight-talking, empowerment and coaching, to give everyone the confidence and capability to adopt new WOWs.
Signature WOWs help you attract people who share your values to help your organisation thrive and they will experience the same.
Working ‘outside-in’ ensures WOWs are chosen that are critical to achieving your goals and delivering a great customer experience
Leading culture from the Boardroom
Effective Board governance is essential to an organisation’s success and most Boards are proficient in how to do this through the lenses of risk, finance, customers and traditional HR.
But many struggle to lead and assure culture effectively, especially Non Executives who may have little day-to-day contact with people in the wider organisation.
For Chairs, Non-Executive Directors and Executive teams we run a ½ day Masterclass that helps you:
- Recognise the tell-tale signs of a brewing cultural crisis
- Provide the tools to act on intuition that there may be a cultural problem
- Spot opportunities to support improvements in the culture, especially during growth
- Align to an agreed approach to gathering cultural data that is
- Insightful
- Not overwhelming
- Appropriate for Board level
- Establish the most effective questions to ask in order to
- Get under the surface of the culture
Go beyond engagement survey data to understand your culture
Culture Change That Works
Leading Culture From The Boardroom Masterclass
