Culture Change

The collectively held norms and assumptions that make up organizational culture drive much of our behavior at work. What needs to shift in your culture to create a high functioning environment that supports your strategic goals?

Watch Video: Culture Change

While a high functioning organizational culture is a well-established enabler of business success, many organizations avoid confronting elements of their culture that are barriers to realizing their strategy. We partner with organizations to diagnose their current culture, envision their desired culture and design high-impact interventions that drive culture change.

We partner with you at any and all stages of your journey to:

Understand the health, style and drivers of your current culture

Develop an in-depth understanding of your organization’s cultural health and unique cultural style, including a read-out on the social, structural and leadership factors which are driving this, via diagnostic surveys, stakeholder interviews, focus groups and desk research.

Envision your ideal culture

Define the organizational culture required to achieve your strategic goals in a co-creative, collaborative way with colleagues and create a high performance, resilient, inclusive and purposeful environment for all.

Uncover the gaps to reach your ideal culture

Assess what is required at a strategic level, and from leaders specifically, to achieve shifts that will drive organizational performance.

Design & implement culture change interventions

Create a dynamic program and equip leaders with the tools, frameworks and interventions required to enable and sustain the desired culture shifts. Ensure alignment across social, structural and leadership drivers to create meaningful change.

Evaluate & extend the impact of your culture change program

Culture never stands still. Measure the progress of the culture change agenda, evaluate its success and evolve its progression in line with current needs.

EMPOWERING & AGILE

We know that effective culture change is dynamic, with a strong emotional component and must be participative yet signaled from the top by leaders. Our methodology reflects this: we immerse ourselves in our clients’ contexts, partner to support inclusive, organization-led change and equip leaders to meaningfully engage with reactions to change. We bring our behavioral science expertise to ground our work in what we know will deliver meaningful, lasting behavior change.

RIGOROUS, RELEVANT & LEADERSHIP EXPERTS

We draw on our 30 years’ experience of working with leaders and organizations, while at the same time deeply understanding our clients’ unique context through qualitative and quantitative methods. No two culture change programs will ever be the same. We understand your organization and apply our experience of leaders and behavior change to design the right intervention for your context.

Individual
Styles

Individual leaders transmit culture. Leaders act as role models, tell stories and reinforce rituals. We help leaders develop as ideal culture carriers, equipping them with the tools and know-how to consistently and proactively signal the required culture.

Team
Dynamics

Culture change must be signaled from the top, and this starts with the executive team. We partner with top teams to scope, shape and deliver culture change programs. We also develop the team to lead in a way which both signals and reinforces the required cultural shifts.

Organizational Culture

Culture change is delivered through both cross-organization interventions and localised interventions. We support clients to understand what drives their overarching culture and subcultures, not just how they manifest. As a result, our clients know how and where to focus their efforts to achieve the required culture shifts.

Case Studies

Leadership Development & Cultural Change With A Fortune 100 Retailer

Development & Sponsorship Program For High-Po Black & Latinx Leaders With Fortune 500 Company

Creating A Leadership Capability Framework With Coats

Designing A Custom 360 Feedback Tool With A British Multinational Insurance Company

Reframing Resistance

Reactions to culture change, even negative ones, are natural, human, and always insightful.

How To Write The Unwritten Rules

The best leaders shape the culture around them.

Aligning the Engines of Culture

How to leverage the three drivers of organizational culture change.

Meritocracy

The hidden risks to inclusion and the benefits of equity.

Untangling the Intangible

How to determine your organization’s cultural fingerprint

A Framework for Leaders Facing Difficult Decisions

In an article for HBR, YSC CEO Eric Pliner shares a framework for how to make difficult, subjective leadership decisions with clarity and integrity.

Leveraging Disruption

Covid-19 pushed culture up the agenda, so what can organizations do to make the most of the ‘Covid-19 catalyst’?

Eroding or Thriving?

How leaders can maintain organizational culture during Covid-19.

Beyond Crisis Leadership

Like it or not, most leaders have essentially been leading for the present – now they have to lead for the future, and it’s a totally different skill.

Creating A Post Covid Culture

Tips on identifying and encouraging the behavioral changes needed to support a new business strategy post Covid.

Leading Recovery

The key question facing many businesses now is what to do next, either as the recession elongates or recovery comes.

Decision Making Principles Amidst Fast-Paced Change and Ongoing Uncertainty

The COVID-19 crisis has put leadership decision making under a spotlight. Decisions need to be made at pace in a context of continuous change.