Culture Change

The Need

In today's rapidly changing business environment an organisation may come to realise that their traditional ways of working, beliefs, assumptions and values have become a hindrance to achieving success.

Faced with the pressures of intense global competition and changes in society, legislation and the marketplace, it may need to shift to:

• A faster pace of decision making.
  
  
• Superior execution of initiatives.
  
  
• Leadership styles that offer support, feedback and empowerment combined with a sharper focus on performance and quality management.
  
  
• A restless dissatisfaction with the status quo and a drive for innovation, or
  
  
• A complete commitment to delivering the brand promise.
  
  

Mergers and acquisitions also require culture change in order to achieve the intended synergies.

The YSC Process

• We see it as essential to connect with the client's issues, understand their current situation and to identify with their future objectives. In doing so, YSC's aim is to identify the appropriate levels for change. Our experience is that change is most successful when it moves in a direction sympathetic to the deep grain of an organisation's embedded purpose and values. Ultimately, change is anchored in individual behaviours. Understanding these behavioural aspects is YSC's key strength.
  
  
• Having defined the nature of the change, the client's needs often becomes to create and communicate a compelling message. Again, our experience proves that this message must be grounded in business reality - stretching but realistic and offering tangible benefits. Effective messages are repeated through different mechanisms, e.g. via workshops, internal communications and informal networks.
  
  
• We work with our clients to identify appropriate individuals who can act as change agents within the organisation. These individuals need to ensure that they have the buy-in of key stakeholders. They need to help people translate the agreed message into everyday terminology and activities. They also need to confront the issues that the organisation is struggling to bottom out. YSC will work with teams of internal change agents to promote progress.
  
  
• Measuring progress is critical. Multiple perspectives should be taken into account. Both qualitative as well as quantitative data is useful, and measures of mood and feelings can be as valuable as harder metrics. YSC uses Psymmetry Pulse Feedback™ surveys at the level of individuals, teams and organisations to track the impact of change over time.
  
  

Case Examples

• YSC has worked in partnership with a global FMCG company to transform its leadership style into a high performance coaching culture. This entailed diagnostic work with individuals using 360-degree feedback to assess their readiness for change, coupled with an extensive series of workshops throughout the organisation. Developing leadership capabilities and embedding shared values in this way is now acknowledged to be one of the fundamental enablers supporting their business strategy.
  
  
• YSC has worked with the subsidiary of a major bank to clarify the leadership behaviour required to deliver its strategy. A series of workshops focused on developing these teams of individual behaviours in the context of delivering key goals. We then helped the organisation to embed the new behaviours, resulting in a significant shift in leadership behaviour at all levels.

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