Case Study: Culture15 Diagnosis
The Challenge/Context
Following on from an intense period of focus on aligning their culture and investment in their leaders, M&G wanted to evaluate the impact their work was having, identify next steps and report back to the Board. The organisation had set out to build a culture that was set around six key themes – customer-centric, respectful, accountable, safe, inclusive, and one team – and wanted to evaluate how well these were embedding into the organisation to-date.
The Approach
We conducted a full culture diagnostic to create a view of the existing culture and the progress the organisation had made on its cultural journey. By aligning the six desired cultural themes with observable, collective behaviours from our Culture15 framework, we were able to evaluate the specific progress made across the business and pinpoint where increased focus would be needed in the next phase of work. We supplemented the diagnostic survey with leadership interviews and mixed employee focus groups to create a more nuanced picture of the progress and aggregate key qualitative themes. We consolidated all findings into a full culture diagnostic report which the CEO and Executive Team subsequently shared with the Board to provide a clear steer on future areas of focus.
The Impact
The culture diagnostic revealed that the organisation had made progress in a number of areas: leadership visibility and enhanced communications were felt to have improved during the pandemic and team spirit was generally high. It also revealed several key behaviours that needed continued focus to drive business performance – notably challenge, learning, and accountability. The qualitative insights further signalled a need to focus on specific process improvement and leadership behaviours as enablers for change, enabling the Exec Team to become more intentional in their initiatives and have an informed, collective conversation about where to focus next, and their role within it.
“Culture15 helped us gain sharp insights into our culture, and most importantly gave us the right platform to deliver practical actions. They bring a straightforward and pragmatic approach and are easy to work with. Their start point is with business strategy, and they have simple and well-thought-through tools that underpin their approach.”
Irene McDermott Brown, Chief HR Officer, M&G Investments UK
