Programmes

Culture & change

Culture work that starts with measurement, and is willing to conclude that the problem is structural rather than cultural.

Diagnostic 6 weeks, then scoped
Shape
Team, function or whole organisation
Who is in the room
Diagnostic from £14,000
Indicative fee

Every organisation that asks for culture work has already decided it has a culture problem. Roughly a third of the time the diagnostic says otherwise: the behaviours people complain about are rational responses to how the work is organised, how people are paid, or who has authority over what.

That is an awkward finding to deliver, because it is not the engagement anyone bought. We deliver it anyway, and we have twice recommended that a client stop a culture programme and take the money to an operating model review instead.

Where the work is genuinely cultural, we measure before and after on the same instrument — a validated psychological safety and voice scale rather than an engagement survey, because engagement measures satisfaction and tells you almost nothing about whether people will raise a problem.

The intervention is usually smaller than expected: a change to how meetings run, a change to who is in them, and a visible response to the first three problems raised. What determines success is almost never the workshop. It is whether the first person who speaks up is thanked or managed.

What you get

What is actually delivered

  • A baseline on a validated safety and voice scale, not an engagement survey
  • A written finding, including "this is structural" where that is the answer
  • An intervention scoped to what the diagnostic found
  • The same measurement repeated at six and twelve months
Next step

Start with the diagnostic, not the programme

Six weeks of interviews and a baseline measure, and a written finding — including the finding that the problem is structural and a development programme will not touch it. We have delivered that one twice.