BACKGROUND

Our client was a business employing c300 people. It had job descriptions, an induction process and an appraisal process. However all these were focused primarily on what people had to achieve rather than the way they were to be achieved. Although a set of ‘values’ had been developed by senior management some years ago there had been no real attempt to promote those values and encourage people to act in the way that supported the values.

Objectives

The objective was to define the culture that was required, to review the values that already existed to ensure they reflected the desired culture, and to establish behaviours and measures that would be used to encourage everyone to act in a way that promoted and supported the culture.

Process

The following were the main elements of the process we adopted

• We reviewed the current processes and supporting documentation. (e.g. the strategy and business plan, current trading, how the appraisal process was applied etc)
• We facilitated a one-day workshop with the senior management team to define the culture they wanted. (Since the business was well established and most of the team had been with the business for some years it was more a matter of clarifying what was seen to be the core elements of what was currently done, than establishing a wholly new culture)
• From the above we asked those involved in the workshop to develop a range of possible headline ‘competencies’ which they considered to be critical in order to define their business. We collated these and facilitated a further workshop when their ideas were discussed and a limited number of ‘core competencies’ were developed with a definition of each.
• We then developed a range of ‘behaviours’ that might be appropriate for people to adopt in order to support the core competencies and these were developed further, as examples, in conjunction with the senior management team.
• Managers then used this framework to establish a limited number of behavioural competencies for each job and to agree, on an individual by individual basis, the behaviours that the individual would focus on.

Outcome and benefits

The outcome of the exercise was that the business now has a flexible framework that is applied both formally (through the formalities of the appraisal process) and informally (in the day-to-day dealings of people in the organisation). The benefit was that the common culture that was required within the business, and would be promoted to the outside world as the particular strengths of the organisation, would be supported by specific actions that would be taken by everyone. An ‘audit’ of the process is to take place on a regular basis.

Geoffrey Bray led this assignment and Keith Hall and Jeremy Payne were the two other consultants involved.