Culture change programme

A culture change programme puts the culture you’re working towards into practice across your organisation. Like any change, it means deciding where to start and what comes next, and bringing people with you as it goes. With culture, a lot of that happens team by team, as people work out what your principles and practices look like in their own work, with support from their leaders and from us. We’d plan it with you, building on what’s already working, and adjust as you learn what helps.

When a culture change programme might help

A culture change programme is for when you know the culture you’re working towards and want help putting it into practice. If you’d like to see how your culture is today, an organisational culture assessment can help. If you’re still shaping the culture you’d like to create, target culture design might suit you better. Here are some of the moments that bring people to a culture change programme.

What a culture change programme might involve

Every culture change programme is different, so we’d shape it with you around your size, what’s changing and what else is going on. Everything in it links back to the culture you’ve agreed you want to create - your target culture - and the principles, practices and environment that make it up.

Telling the story of the culture you’re creating

A culture change programme works best when everyone can picture where it’s heading, and what it’s designed to change. So our first job is helping you describe it in a way people across the organisation understand and get behind - what it will look, sound and feel like on an ordinary day, and why it matters for the people you serve as well as the people doing the work.

That often means turning what’s been agreed into stories people would recognise: where you are now, where you’re heading, and what will be different for them.

Alongside the story, we’d agree with you what success will look like - a handful of signs you’d expect to see in everyday work as the new culture takes hold. They give everyone something concrete to aim for, and they’re how we’d judge together whether the programme is working.

From then on, those stories are the thread through the whole programme. Each part comes back to the same question: is this helping us get closer to the culture we want to create?

Deciding where to start, and in what order

We’d plan with you which parts of the new culture to start with - often the principles and practices that matter most, or that people will feel soonest - and what comes next. Starting with a few teams gives you something to learn from, and lets others see the new culture working before it reaches them.

We’d look at who’s affected and how much, since some teams will change a lot about their working day and others very little. We’d also check what else is landing on the same people, so the busiest teams aren’t asked to take on too much at once.

Most culture change programmes run in short stages, with a pause after each to check you’re moving in the right direction, so the plan can change as you learn.

Keeping leaders involved after the launch

We help your leaders stay close to the programme well beyond the launch, so the story keeps coming from them. That often starts with leaders going first - working the new way in their own meetings and decisions before asking others to - since people tend to take their lead from what leaders do. A few things we might work on together:

• Getting the leadership team on the same page about the culture you’re creating, including talking through any disagreements early, before they reach the rest of the organisation.
• Agreeing what each leader will do, and when, so staying involved doesn’t get crowded out once other priorities arrive.
• Helping leaders tell the story in their own words, so it sounds like them.
• Sharing leadership where that’s how you work, across sites, services or partners. A group of leaders who each own part of it can carry a change well.

Supporting managers through the change

Your managers are usually who their teams turn to when they want to know whether a change is real. They’re also the people who connect the new culture to each team’s day-to-day work, so we put a lot of our support here. We’d build the change into routines managers already have, like team meetings and one-to-ones, rather than adding new meetings to a busy week. And we’d be on hand for the harder parts, like coaching people through a change or hearing concerns that can’t be answered straight away.

Bringing people with you

Together we’d plan how the story reaches everyone - who needs to hear what, and from whom - with as much conversation as announcement. A newsletter can share what’s coming, but a session where people can ask questions and push back helps them understand why it matters, and gives them a say in how it happens.

We’d bring people in early, and keep the story going as things move - including what has changed because of what people said.

Helping each team make it work for them

The culture you’re creating stays the same across the organisation. How it fits each team’s work is something we help each team work out, usually through short guided sessions that managers lead with our support. What do these principles mean for the way we work now? How do these practices fit our workflow, and the way we work with other teams?

When people can see the value in their own work, they’re far more likely to use it. We’d do the same for different roles, since what a principle asks of someone on the front line can be quite different from what it asks of someone setting the budget. Teams can share what they’ve worked out, too, so others can borrow what’s useful.

Helping people through the harder parts

We’d help you and your managers work through pushback as it comes up. Letting go of familiar ways of working is hard, and resistance is a natural part of any change - often a sign that people haven’t yet seen what it means for them, or worry about how it will fit with work that’s already busy.

It usually helps to listen first, then work through the practical questions together: what changes in someone’s week, and what support would help. Clear routes for concerns to reach someone who can act on them help too. Where speaking up feels risky, quieter routes like one-to-ones or anonymous feedback can help people say what’s really on their mind.

The people others listen to

Alongside leaders and managers, we’d help you find and support the people others already turn to for advice or to get things done. They’re not always the most senior, but they’re trusted, and when they believe in the culture you’re creating, others tend to follow. A small group of them from different teams and levels can help it spread and tell you how things are really going.

We’d look for trust rather than enthusiasm alone, and make sure they have time and support, since they’ll be doing this alongside their day job.

Helping new ways of working stick

We’d also look with you at everything around your teams that tells people what really counts, so it backs the new culture rather than pulling against it. If appraisals still praise working alone when the new culture asks for working together, most people will follow the appraisal. So we might look at:

• What gets noticed and rewarded, including recognition and promotion.
• Performance frameworks and appraisals, so conversations about performance include how people work as well as what they deliver.
• Recruitment and induction, so new people pick up the culture from their first week.
• Job descriptions, so roles reflect the practices you’ve agreed.
• Time and space for the new practices, so they don’t get squeezed out by the day job.

We’d work with your HR team and others who look after these systems, since they know them best and changes need to fit how they already work. And we’d help you celebrate progress along the way - noticing teams who are already working the new way helps others picture it in their own work.

Seeing how it’s going, and adjusting

Are the practices being used? Do the principles come up when decisions are made? We’d help you keep an eye on the signs of success you agreed at the start, using simple checks from everyday work.

Short team check-ins and conversations with the people others listen to usually tell you a lot, with a quick survey now and then for a wider view. We’d review with you regularly and decide together what to keep, change or stop. As things settle, we hand the running of it over to your own people, so it doesn’t depend on us being there.

A lighter culture change programme might focus on a few teams and a handful of practices over a few months. A deeper one might reach the whole organisation in stages, with changes to HR systems and a network of people others listen to along the way.

What success might look like

Success for a culture change programme is the culture you agreed, seen in everyday work. The signs we’d agree with you at the start come from the story of the culture you’re creating, so they’re specific to you. They often include things like:

• Principles coming up when decisions are made, whether that’s a board meeting or a team planning its week.
• Common practices in use across teams, in a form that fits each team’s work.
• Managers leading conversations about the culture in their own team meetings, without needing us in the room.
• People asking new questions - about how to do things better, rather than how the basics work - which suggests they’ve started making the change their own.
• Recognition, appraisals and recruitment backing the new ways of working, rather than pulling against them.
• People describing the culture in their own words, and new starters picking it up in their first few weeks.

Some signs appear early, like teams trying new practices in the first few weeks. Others, like changes to appraisals or recruitment, become clear over months.

By the time we step back, your own people are running it - leaders telling the story, managers supporting their teams, and the people others listen to helping it spread - with a simple way to keep checking the signs yourselves.

What happens after that is up to you. Many organisations carry on themselves. Others like to have us nearby as things settle, helping you keep your culture going over time. And if it turns out you need something lighter than you expected, we’ll say so.

Common questions

Ready to put your culture into practice? Talk to us about a culture change programme