I missed last week’s blog because I was in the midst of running my first masterclass - ‘Creating a Culture of Change’. For those of you who couldn’t make it (and nearly 25 did, from companies like Elavon Merchant Services, AIB, Microsoft, PWC, Ornua and Ireland’s oldest printers, Turners Printing), I thought I’d summarise what I believe to be the key elements for organisations who want to create a culture of change. 1. Create a compelling narrative
You need to connect your staff to your business on a more emotional level - you need to identify your Why - WHY you do what you do?
Your Why underpins your corporate narrative - the reason you exist and why people should work for you.
Your narrative explains where you are today, where you want to get to tomorrow, how you’re going to get there and how your people will help you to do that. And it does it in an emotionally engaging way.
2. Develop Engaging Leaders
You could spend €10k, €50k or €100k co-creating a beautifully scripted, wonderfully designed and produced narrative, but if your leaders don’t have the skills and experience to bring it to life for their people, you’re on a hiding to nothing.
They need the skills, confidence, training and expertise to be great People Leaders. And in most cases that takes work. Good, authentic, human people leadership doesn’t tend to occur naturally.
It’s their job to bring your narrative to life for their people in a way that resonates with them - they can do a much better job at bringing your narrative to life for your people that someone like, say, your CEO. Yes, your CEO can talk broad-brush, big picture but they don't know every employee on the ground - your people leaders do!
3. Communicate with your people
Now we’re cooking! You’ve created your narrative and your leaders are starting to embed it. It’s a great start.
However, to really start to make a difference you need to use stories to show your people where change is happening and the impact it’s having.
And you need to do that when things are going well AND when they aren’t - being honest, particularly when things aren't going quite so well is a great way to build trust.
Ensuring you always link back to your narrative will show a level of cohesion and ensure that everyone is pointing in the same direction.
By telling stories you’ll drive more connection to your narrative. And as your people start to connect the two, they start to see the role they play in driving your business forward.
Which in turn leads to increased engagement and business performance.
BINGO!
Flywheel effect
When you get your leaders on point and put effort into your storytelling you find that one starts to accelerate the other. Amazon calls it the Flywheel Effect - as one part of the engine starts to spin, it starts to spin the others and creates a virtuous circle.
January Masterclass
If you want to learn more, I’ll be running another masterclass on ‘Creating a Culture of Change’ on 17th January in Dublin. You can find out more and book tickets by clicking here
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