“Workers watch your feet, not your lips” - changing culture at scale
Apr 16, 2024
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Darren Ashby, Speaker at Business Four Zero, discusses changing company culture with examples from Electronic Arts and Tesco. They focus on the importance of internal culture, purpose, and values. They highlight the need for behavior change and unity in the workplace for successful transformations.
Establishing a strong purpose aligned with strategy drives organizational change.
Leaders instilling specific behaviors can drive performance improvements.
Fostering open communication and trust creates a culture of energy and resilience.
Deep dives
The Importance of Purpose, Strategy, and Culture
Establishing a strong organizational purpose aligned with strategy and culture is essential for driving change within a business. Purpose should not just be aspirational but should serve as a strategic compass guiding the organization's actions. Culture is shaped by emotional commitment to shared goals, core values, and specific behaviors that elevate performance. Defining critical behaviors and aligning them with the organizational purpose can inject vitality and unify the collective efforts of the team.
Transforming Organizations through Leadership and Culture Shifts
The transformative power of culture change lies in behaviors demonstrated by leaders and employees. By instilling specific behaviors like thinking about return on investment, moving fast, and encouraging direct communication, organizations can drive significant improvements in performance and engagement. Changing the way leaders lead and aligning core processes with desired cultural norms can foster a meaningful shift in the organization's dynamics.
Energizing the Work Environment and Navigating Change
Creating a culture of energy and resilience involves fostering open communication, providing clarity on performance, and building trust within teams. During times of change, such as the shift brought by COVID-19, maintaining a sense of cohesion and human interaction becomes crucial. Leaders who focus on finding agency for themselves and their teams, promoting open discussions, and facilitating retrospectives can generate positive energy and adaptability within the organization.
Importance of Being Together in a Business Setting
The podcast emphasizes the significance of being together in a well-run business, highlighting the importance of maintaining strong relationships within the team. It mentions that even though the idea of remote work became prevalent post-COVID, the new reality suggests that businesses should focus on being together more often. By sharing an example of a leader at Rekkit who prioritized face-to-face interactions to build relationships and prevent a transactional nature, the podcast stresses the value of physical presence for effective teamwork and relationship building.
Challenges of Bureaucracy and the Need for Purposeful Strategy
The podcast delves into the challenges posed by bureaucracy and the need for a clear sense of direction in organizations to drive cultural change effectively. It discusses the distinction between pace and busyness in organizations, highlighting that a lack of purposeful strategy can lead to fast movement without a clear direction. By citing examples from Tesco and IHG, it emphasizes the importance of setting a strategy at the right level to guide teams towards a shared outcome, fostering progress and engagement.
Today’s top episode goes to the heart of an issue that a lot of people raise with me.
They say ‘where do you start when changing a culture’.
To some extent it’s what the episode about the hospital trust in Barking was about, going in and changing the culture of a huge organisation.
I saw one of today’s guests Darren Ashby speak at an event - talking through the specifics of how his company Business Four Zero tried to change the culture of Tesco. Business Four Zero are one of a group of organisations who work with leaders to change company culture. I know there’s a few of these firms. I attended a dazzling event by one firm called Scarlett Abbot in this field about a month ago.
Darren is joined by Atif Sheikh as they talk through the specifics of what they did with firms like Electronic Arts, Aviva and Tesco. They’ve turned some of their work into a book which you can buy here.
Some of the things that stood out for me:
What’s the number one thing you look for in a high performing culture? How internal are they? How much time are they spending on themselves vs the outside world?
Only 28% of workers say they are connected to purpose
Culture is what are you committed to as group - emotional commitment of what you want to create
Values - before you define your values know that there are 6 core values shared amongst everyone (sometimes called the 6 Pillars of Character - Trust, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship). These should not be your differentiator. These are universal basic expectations. You need to define something differentiating
So how do you elevate a culture? They introduce 2 or 3 critical behaviours that elevate a culture Might be ‘be kinder’ And they build a process of how you might enact those behaviours
For example Intercontinental Hotel Group
Had switched from being a hotel owner to a franchise business
CEO needed to remove silos
What did they need? Too many people in the business didn’t understand how they made money - it made spending decisions hard. So they focussed on ‘think return’
Additionally it had become complacent, so they decided to ‘move fast’
Finally they agreed to ‘talk straight’ with each other
