the 8 most valued culture change activities

David Whelpton and Tony Lewis help organisations achieve their desired culture. David is a Director of Broadgate Creative and has a long history of helping organisations across the world achieve effective communications and develop the culture they desire.  Tony Lewis is a business management consultant with experience in organisational culture development, people type profiling, service improvement and operational transformation.

These are the eight activities organisations say have the highest impact on their positive culture development.

Our experience is that culture needs to be explained both to staff and to the managers. It’s a tricky area. Don’t assume your staff understand what’s expected and your managers how to achieve it. Think about the support that will be needed and the steps and actions your managers will need to take to deliver.

Whether this is good, concise written communication, quick service delivery or excellent customer care, organisations need to focus their culture on customer desires. It’s worth using communications expertise in your written word, branding and imagery to display your culture to the outside world.

Usually we find organisations dedicate a few activities to developing culture, but many on service development. Identify which activities bring you most value and create the right balance to achieve what you’re looking for.  Plan, identify the value and commit.

Use communication expertise to develop a clear, memorable comms plan which includes developing a common language that your staff will easily be able to adopt and use. 

Staff should know their own and colleagues’ preferred communication and working styles as this will to promote effective internal communication, collaboration and harmony. When staff have an appreciation of different people types and their preferences then they will have the awareness to engage customers more effectively. With understanding and appreciation of different people types comes improved respect, inclusivity and engagement.

Develop and support your stars who can deliver your values and act as a magnet and an inspiration to others.  

Support managers and provide them with tools to help their staff move from ‘poor behaviour/poor performance’ to ‘desired behaviour/desired performance’ areas.  

Develop the right measures to track culture improvement covering performance indicators, staff indicators or customer feedback indicators. Organisations find taking a ‘single view of culture’ which looks at culture activities and performance indicators to be very beneficial.