Skip to content
Screenshot 2024 02 07 at 13 50 45

Case Study - All things Culture

We're extremely proud of this piece of work but because the details of this particular project are highly confidential, we can only share top-line facts.

Our facilitation style combined with our approach to partnering led this Power Generation Business to trust us with focussing & enabling the culture of one of one of its core services teams.

The brief

With business strategy in place, it was clear that not everyone in the organisation understood it in the same way. The time had come to ‘land the strategy’ with the 40-strong leadership team. The brief was to make sure they were equipped to deliver it through its everyday culture, ensuring it lived well in an organisation of around 300 colleagues. This function was diverse in job role, location, expertise and learning style across:

  • around 120 call-centre colleagues
  • numerous expert analysts
  • many niche roles such as commercial, pricing, trading etc
  • renewables team
  • all sales colleagues
  • a marketing team
  • customer facing and back-office teams.

Colleagues are spread geographically in this organization and hybrid working is the norm. Not surprising to note that micro-cultures lived across the business and the organisation recognised the need to develop the right culture, while ensuring an explicit and tangible connection to the wider organisation.

Overall, the organisation was aware of the damage that an ill-conceived culture can do and fully understood the significance of building and living the ‘right’ culture to succeed in its goals.

This would be a substantial 12–18-month project and a significant investment of time and resource. They engaged TFP and Lim as the external facilitation partners to understand business needs within its industry context and deliver the innovative Momentum X Culture project to equip, engage, and align all colleagues.

Crucially, they were open to the possibilities of working creatively online and using the time between workshops to connect with ‘breakout’ work. In effect, maximising a growing, internal ownership that cultivates rich conversations and output.

Before the meeting

First, we got crystal clear on the purpose and outcomes for the project:

  • Map culture so that it directly serves the organisation’s goals and strategy.
  • Be known as a good place to work and where people want to develop.
  • Be clear about what it will take to recognise milestones as culture develops and embeds.
  • Articulate the what, why and how of culture in an authentic way.
  • Have a culture journey to develop it and make it live.
  • Equip the leadership group with the skills to role model and lead culture.

Next, we:

  • Tailored our Momentum X Culture© to map-out the overall phases and timing of the programme in a digital space which became the project hub.
  • Outlined the overall plan and partnered with Lim’s visualisers to bring it to life visually so all stakeholders and participants were informed.
  • Split the project into phases which enabled different focuses and different people to be involved.

Preparation

We established two design teams of leaders who helped us to keep a ‘feet on the ground’ connection with the business in two important areas:

  • The Project SteerCo team who ensured rhythm, cadence and decision-making
  • The Culture Playbook team who worked with Lim to assemble the living tool to track, evidence and celebrate the way culture enables people and delivers strategy.

During

The project was delivered in distinct phases; each phase building from the one before. In this way we were able to socialise the work and get input from the entire organisation. Phases of the project included the following elements all achieved in facilitated sessions:

  • Clarifying vision, strategy and contribution to the wider organisation.
  • Describing the culture we need and the culture we have today.
  • Leadership Development sessions to provide insight and tools to lead culture.
  • Leadership Team sessions to work on themselves and fine tune as a team.
  • Separate sessions with the Senior Leadership Team.
  • The development of a living Culture Playbook.

Outcomes

As described by the client, we were able to:

  • Agree the identified project outcomes by co-steering the project alongside TFP and ensuring good cadence and pace.
  • Learn from TFP how to design and facilitate culture labs to lead collaboratively with wider DES employees.
  • Develop skills as facilitative leaders and practice collaborative working.
  • Ensure tangible connection with the group-wide culture.
  • Be equipped with a living culture playbook designed to describe our culture, the journey and support our ongoing culture evolution. 

We continue to work with this organisation and their wider group structure.