Lighting a cultural spark – one workshop at a time

The aspiration

Our client has a 90+ year history of innovation, creating outstanding products and customer focus and yet continues to learn, transform and evolve to keep pace with the demands of a changing world. New leadership, a refreshed, clearly articulated purpose where each word matters, and an exciting strategy are being rolled out across the organisation bringing real clarity on their reason to be and what they needed to deliver.

In the midst of this change, they recognised the opportunity to engage the organisation on the journey and importantly to think together about the culture that would support this direction. To help clarify expectations, a new set of values and behaviours were developed in 2023, that both respected the heritage culture of the organisation and built from that for the future.

Lodestar were asked to partner with them to design an intervention that would lift these values and behaviours off the page and into their daily ways of working.

How we partnered

Our starting point was to immerse ourselves in what was happening in the organisation – understanding the strategy and how people related to it, reviewing the launch of the purpose, values and behaviours and what they meant to the leadership team. We also worked closely with the people team to determine key principles for example being experiential rather than theoretical; face to face (regional) with a mix of teams, businesses and functions; be business owned and led, with active leadership involvement.

What we came up with

The structure of the workshop drew on the principles of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle (1) helping employees connect their work with their why, what and how. And to reflect on how this aligned with the overall direction of the organisation. The design included curated pre-work to warm up thinking before the event, deep dive, interactive, face to face sessions and closing commitments.

Passing the baton

Our client had identified 80+ volunteers to be “culture facilitators” – representatives from businesses and functions united by their passion to drive change and make a difference. Virtual, global, train the trainer sessions enabled 8 facilitators to run four pilots in different regions/cultures, get feedback and enabled us to iterate the content.

Successful pilots completed; we rolled out TTT sessions to all culture facilitators. They came into the interactive, online sessions with a range of facilitation experience but left feeling confident and comfortable to go live. Sessions have been rolling out globally in 2024.

Making it stick

At the outset the team were very aware that the events that are just the start of the journey – cultural change takes determination and dedication. A committed team of internal culture facilitators including members of the senior leadership team are critical to embedding and systemising this shift.

If you would like to find out more about this project and how we could help your organisation, please contact us.