Organisation Development
(Improving Performance through Culture Change)

Why does culture change matter?

Because you can’t really change an organisation without changing culture.

Most organisations that use us for organisation development have over time lost some of their competitiveness, and realise they need to wake up and do something different – creating a new culture.

They might need to:-

Virtually every organisation that has brought about radical change has also changed its culture (by evolution or revolution).  Similarly, every business that has broken into a market with high entry barriers has also brought with it a distinctly different culture.  Also, mergers and acquisitions often flounder because they have not created a culture for the new circumstances.

Limits

Common strategies like cost cutting will have an impact but won’t necessarily create culture change.  Nor will vision, mission and values “statements” have much effect if they end up being pretty words.

Words are not enough to change culture, you need to change people’s attitudes and behaviour.  We think we’re good at that.

When does it happen?

• When a visionary CEO, MD or Director has a mental picture of a dynamic, responsive organisation and wants to realise that vision.
• When executives see the future unfolding and recognise the need to change now.
• When people start to feel the pain of changed markets, changed margins, of post-merger frictions, etc. etc.

What do we do?

Most importantly, we use our experience to be honest with you.  We will readily tell you if we don’t think your plans will work, or if the time is not right, or if we don’t think we can provide good value for you.  That approach may lose us business in the short term, but we gain in the long term.

The key elements of our approach are:-

1. With our core skill in effective diagnosis,
   • We talk to you and we listen to you.
   • We question you and we challenge you.
   • We explore what you think you need, and what you are already doing that may help or hinder our work with you.
2. We reach a point of understanding where we can work together, and a “partnership” is formed.
3. We plan together how to make the most of time, money and resources.
4. We run unique and powerful “change” workshops to help people look at their behaviour and their underpinning beliefs and attitudes.  These residential sessions are at the heart of any change programme and are tailored for each situation.
5. During our partnership we will go through regular progress reviews, always looking for tangible achievements.