...a practical toolkit program for leaders on cultivating more constructive cultures to support strategic success
presented by
Bill Cropper
Aligning strategy and culture is a potent recipe for success and knowing how to lead it is crucial…
Culture is critical for good performance, good teams, good relationships and good strategy…
Getting your culture ‘right’. It’s the most critical facet to focus on for leaders who want superior team performance and sustainable results. No leader can afford to ignore how pervasive and influential culture is. It either helps you move forward – or it can hold you back.
Why culture matters? Because it profoundly affects strategy, performance, adaptability and behaviour – all foundational for workplace survival and success.
Everything that happens in any organisation is impacted by your cultural orbit – and aligning culture closely with strategy is essential for great outcomes.
High performance is culture-reliant. And it’s pretty clear a prime factor in cultivating constructive cultures that high-perform is the part leaders play to set the right cultural course, steer behaviour, and what they model themselves in terms of what they say, how they act and what they believe.
Culture’s big bearing on well-being. I’s not just strategy and performance either. The culture we work in also affects how it feels to work in a place, our levels of positivity and resilience and ultimately our physical wellbeing and mental fitness.
What shape is your culture in? Do you face any of these hurdles or hold-backs at the moment?
- Culture is strong and positive but it can be enhanced and strengthened?
- Culture feels stagnant – lacking in energy drive, inspiration and direction?
- Culture puts individualism and competition ahead of collective working and collaboration?
- A once-connective, inclusive culture is now more disconnected and disengaged?
- A culture of responsibility-shedding and blame leads to half-hearted commitment and lack of collective accountability
- Culture needs to be more adaptive to meet new and emerging challenges
- Commitment to shared vision and mutual outcomes seems somewhat depleted?
- Cultural contradictions are commonplace – we say we value one thing but actually do another?
- A conflict-averse and risk-avoidant culture conceals conflicts and buries issues that remain unresolved
- Culture needs a different steer to adopt new beliefs and behaviours that support our strategic directions
Make leading culture a central pillar of who you are...
Leaders play a central role as modellers, curators and sometimes creators of the culture around them. And many of us need to do more of this…
What we say, how we act, the beliefs we express and the stories we tell, may well be amongst a leader’s most powerful change tools. Leaders are instrumental in:
- Engaging people in culture conversations and culture-building activities
- Helping them grasp new guiding principles you seek to integrate into the cultural mix
- Forging commitment to adapt and adopt new beliefs and behaviours.
Culture itself has been dubbed the new business strategy. It either limits or enlarges what can be achieved. Culturally-alert leaders make deliberate decisions about how to shape and adjust it so it aligns with values, actions, behaviours – and also matches strategy.
Minus that, leaders struggle to get better results, more engagement and higher performance.
And being a culture leader takes more than good intentions. Leaders need tools, frameworks and processes to help transform culture….
That’s where our Leading Culture Clinics come in...
Culture is one of today’s hot business topics. Most leaders are acutely aware of how constructive cultures help people to perform, stay committed, creative, co-operative and collegiate; while dislocated ones breed bad behaviour, toxic work climates, questionable actions and chronic under-performance.
Whether it’s navigating in a new cultural direction, raising cultural awareness, promoting fresh guiding principles, carrying out a culture scan, or devising strategies to switch on cultural reconstruction efforts, Leading Constructive Cultures helps you come to grips with what leading culture really involves, and gives you effective tools to help you do it every step of the way.
In-person on-location over 2-days (or occasionally, as a 1-day fast-track) or live-online as 5 x 2.5hr sessions (or occasionally, as a 3-session fast-track). Whichever option you choose, you’ll reap a bucketful of benefits from attending…
- Master your role as culture-leader
- Better fit between strategy & culture
- Unearth core beliefs and behaviours
- New principles to regenerate culture
- Tips, traps and tricks to lead culture
- Simple tools and steps that work
- See how your culture stands now
- Detect elements to keep, remix, let go
- Develop culture action plans to go
- Engage staff in behaviour change
Master your role as culture-leader
Better fit between strategy and culture
Unearth core beliefs and behaviours
New principles to regenerate culture
Tips, traps and tricks to lead culture
Simple tools and steps that work
See how your culture stands now
Detect elements to keep, remix, let go
Develop culture action plans to go
Engage staff in behaviour change
…or talk to us about In-House clinics for your culture leaders – live or online…
“The culture change activities, processes and training sessions Bill ran have been transformational. Our leadership team were equipped with practical tools that have engaged staff with ways-of-thinking that have generated ownership of a positive workplace culture of learning excellence. Culture Action Teams now operate across the organisation as part of a strategic and sustainable cycle of renewal.”
Culture is the real game-changer in getting great results...
This program strengthens your role as a culture leader and equips you with down-to-earth tools and processes to:
Scope your Role
tools and approaches to plan and lead culture
Unpack Components
what’s culture & what your ideal culture looks like
Plan Positive Steps
to renovate culture with our 8-phase model
Detect Elements
in your current culture to keep, strengthen or change
Replace Cultural Beliefs
and behaviours that are unconstructive
Unlock core Beliefs
in your culture and which are beneficial
Work out where to Start
and develop a Cultural Action Plan
Conduct a Scan
for signs of constructive or dislocated cultures
Craft a Culture
where people are committed and accountable
Unlock the links between constructive cultures and strong strategy…
Your culture didn’t evolve just to support your current crop of strategies. It may historically have other reasons for being…
What really matters is that you need to get the culture to support strategy now. Your culture got you where you are today. But will it get you where you need to be tomorrow?
Constructive cultures happen deliberately by design, not by accident. One of your chief roles as a culture leader is getting the fit right between culture and strategy. It’s critical to success.
- What factors do you watch out for to measure ‘right-fit’ between strategy and culture?
- What beliefs, behaviours or practices in your current culture support strategy and which don’t?
- What do you keep, re-shape or shift for your culture to support strategic directions?
Our Leading Culture Clinic incorporates a raft of tools and activities to enable you to answer these questions so you can:
- Take actions to be more strategic, future-focused and culturally aligned
- Benefit from strengthening your own strategic focus.
- Judge your culture-strategy fit and determine what’s in line and what’s dislocated
- Engage others in strategic-fit thinking, action planning and making cultural adjustments.
Here’s a few criteria for a good fit between strategy and culture… ☛
Strategy & Culture Fit
The Culture-Strategy Fit
While it’s essential to recognise how important this is to get right, you also need to acknowledge you’ll never get a perfect fit. At the same time, the closer the fit is, the more likely your strategy will be supported and take-up will be better.
While you’ll never know for sure if you had the best possible strategy-culture fit, it’s handy to have a few criteria for a good fit, even if this varies with different challenges and contexts.
Here’s a few criteria for what may make a good fit. Think about how these might apply in your context:
🢧 Interested in receiving tips, tools and background articles on culture at work?
Subscribe here to receive our next issue of Culture Counts news….
I found your approach to culture change to be very valuable, realistic, practical and well-researched. It provided useful tools to evaluate findings about our culture and I was particularly attracted to the “patterns” aspects of your framework which triggered me to identify artefacts and espoused values to address in our organisation to evolve understanding of where our culture needs to go.
A few highlights to expect when you come along to a Leading Culture Clinic...
Use our CLEVER Culture Scan to assess your current culture and what elements are functional or dysfunctional
Explore what you can do as a leader to foster new behaviours and beliefs to support cultural regeneration
Complete a Leading Culture Action Checklist to see what else you can do to reshape culture for the results you need
Get the fit right between culture and strategy and what you need to do to adjust or reconstruct for success
Explore what you can do as a leader to foster new behaviours and beliefs to support cultural regeneration
Take away a comprehensive self-coaching Guide & Toolkit with more than 30 culture-building tools to use with your teams
The Culture Change Clinic was excellent, informative, user-friendly and the course structure was well-presented in a progressive way. The knowledge base of the facilitator was extensive and significantly interesting – and the interaction between the facilitator and participants was great to share narratives. The high point for me was the ‘Toolkit’, which I believe will be an extremely useful guide for formulating strategies for culture change in our workplace.”
You need to know what Culture is before you can lead it
Seems an obvious question… Yet often, we have very vague ideas of what culture really is, or how deep it goes. Culture’s generally unspoken and unwritten so it can be elusive to grasp. No wonder our notions about what it is differ from one person to the next.
Here’s our Definition of Culture…
Culture consists of deeply ingrained, often unconscious and taken-for-granted patterns of thinking, feeling, talking and responding along with resident rites and rituals, that dictate how individuals, teams and entire organisations operate and navigate their way through their environment, make sense of it and survive in it.
How it forms. We all live and work inside cultures that dictate what we value, how we behave, even what we feel or think. As soon as any team comes together, they start to work out unwritten but very powerful norms, values and rules about things like:
- How to relate, work together and what’s valued or not
- What behaviours and actions are acceptable or not
- What to celebrate or shun, what works and what doesn’t
Soon, habits, rituals, traditions and customs form. These settle into patterns of what to believe, what to say, how to think, feel, interact, respond and lead. The team starts to develop a cultural memory…
Culture is commonly described as ‘the way we do things around here’ but it’s much more than that…
- As this diagram shows, It’s a set of deeply ingrained patterns and beliefs that we grow accustomed to.
- They’re familiar, well-worn and comfortable and we resist changing them, even if they’re not all that good for us, the team or the organisation.
- Everyone helps construct the culture in the way we habitually think, believe and repeatedly behave, talk and interact.
Culturally-concerned leaders keep a close tab on both the helpful and unhelpful patterns in their culture. Here’s a brief description of these patterns…
Culture Patterns
Patterns that make up Culture...
Culture consists of deeply ingrained, often unconscious and taken-for-granted patterns of thinking, feeling, talking and responding that individuals, teams and organisations use to navigate their way through their environment.
We all produce, preserve and pass on culture by the way we behave, according to these entrenched patterns that evolve slowly and often invisibly alongside us.
They’re familiar, comfortable, well-worn, and we resist changing them, even if they’re not all that good for us.
- Patterns of THINKING: prevailing values, beliefs, assumptions and mental models a team or an entire workplace hold collectively. These often operate unconsciously
- Patterns of BEHAVING: accepted behavioural “rules’ in a team, not always stated explicitly but followed implicitly, that govern the way people interact with each other
- Patterns of TRADITION: webs of stories, myths, legends, creeds, customs and rituals that store meaning and create cultural identity
- Patterns of FEELINGS: the emotions people most commonly experience, display or act out that effect how we treat each other, how we behave, how we think, how we cope with change, challenges and stress and how satisfied, productive and happy we are at work.
- Patterns of CONVERSATIONS: The nature and quality of conversations people have, including what topics are discussable or undiscussable. The way we talk to each other.
- Patterns of LEADERSHIP: style and approach of leaders to how they lead, behaviours they model and reinforce, and how this resonates or not with the people they lead and how their words, actions, motives and directions are perceived by others.
- Patterns of RESPONSIVENESS: the way the culture engages with and responds to changes and challenges in its external environment. How it handles threats, crises, opportunities.
Our Leading Culture Clinic helps you learn ways to identify these cultural patterns and assess which ones are still constructive and which have become dysfunctional over time. Register today
🢧 If you’re interested in receiving tips, tools and background articles on culture at work, subscribe to our periodical Culture Counts News…
The Leading Culture Clinic unpacks culture and equips you with an 8-phase model and practical tools to achieve more constructive outcomes
So often, the superficialities in a culture are changed while the deeper beliefs where the real culture lies are ignored.
The most critical yet often overlooked aspect of making culture change actions work, is digging down to core beliefs that often sit silent and unnoticed at the centre of any culture. If beliefs stay the same, anything else we’ve changed is likely to soon revert back to the way it was.
- Novelties, perks and play-toys like putting a ping-pong table in the lunchroom or slides between floors may attract passing attention but they won’t change a poor culture.
- Redesigning routines, re-structuring or rebranding may give the impression of culture change. But again it runs deeper than that.
- We may focus on changing behaviours that impede performance but neglect deeper core beliefs that keep driving us to behave that way.
Our Leading Culture Clinic shows you techniques and tools for uncovering core beliefs and getting to the centre of your culture
Leading Constructive Cultures Toolkit
complimentary when attending our clinic
Join us at one of our unique clinics live-online or on-location and take-away our comprehensive Leading Culture toolkit to help get you started with cultural regeneration in your workplace.
The guide features:
- A step-by-step 8-stage culture roadmap
- Tips and tools to guide culture action
- Checklists to assess your culture leadership
- Access to our CLEVER culture scan
- Formats to formulate Culture Action Plans
“The culture change guide is outstanding. You should be congratulated on the work you invest in providing such an invaluable post-program resource. I feel I have the tools to explore ways I can move forward with changing my culture.”
Jan Stiling – Nurse Manager, Queensland Health
Leading Constructive Cultures Toolkit
complimentary when attending our clinic
Join us at one of our unique clinics live-online or on-location and take-away our comprehensive Leading Culture toolkit to help get you started with cultural regeneration in your workplace.
The guide features:
- A step-by-step 8-stage culture roadmap
- Tips and tools to guide culture action
- Checklists to assess your culture leadership
- Access to our CLEVER culture scan
- Formats to formulate Culture Action Plans
“The culture change guide is outstanding. You should be congratulated on the work you invest in providing such an invaluable post-program resource. I feel I have the tools to explore ways I can move forward with changing my culture.”
Jan Stiling – Nurse Manager, Queensland Health
“The course was well structured and flowed well from one day to the next. I loved the activities used to get people to think about culture in a visual way, enjoyed the systems thinking applications to culture and got more understanding of how tacit assumptions rule culture and what to do with them. The guidebook is well structured and will be great for continuing future use.”
Cultivate a culture of accountability that gets people thinking and behaving in ways that produce the results you want
Is Leading Culture for you?
This down-to-earth, action-based clinic can seriously benefit leaders at any level who want to consolidate or strengthen their approach to leading culture in more methodical, informed and effective ways – executives, directors, senior and middle leaders, and also principals and heads of departments.
It’s especially useful for leaders to sharpen their focus on what to model to reinforce constructive cultural behaviour, and those who want simple tools to work with their teams. It’s also applicable to
People working on cultural reconstruction projects in their workplace
HR practitioners or trainers who want to develop their own culture courses
Other professionals who want to widen their knowledge about culture
We also run a separate awareness-raising course for staff we call Creating Constructive Cultures.
You make the culture through what you model What kind of behaviour do you model as a culture leader?
It’s commonly believed senior leaders play the most significant role in cultural regeneration. This may be ideal but it’s often not the case.
While senior leader sponsorship and steerage are invaluable, for most workplaces, culture is modelled by middle-leaders. They’re the face of it for most people who look to what they model. They are also better placed to lead it.
If your middle leaders are really the face of the culture and the main means to change it, it makes eminently good sense to begin your culture work early with educating them in how to lead it – and that’s why our Leading Culture Clinic is intentionally aimed at middle leader levels, and not just senior leaders.
“I wanted to determine the priorities for revitalising our school culture and I came away with useful resources for working through the process of finding the best way forward to identify “what’ aspects of the school culture need revitalising. I also wanted to find out if others in the leadership team were in agreement and if so how we would collaboratively work on revitalisation to engage the whole school community.”
How does your Workplace Culture measure up?
An obvious place to start with cultural regeneration is to first find out what kind of shape the current culture’s in before you do much else.
- Our CLEVER Culture Scan takes an imprint of your culture now, measured against 6 Dimensions that can apply in any workplace.
- It’s a way to involve everyone assessing good aspects of the culture you want to keep and not-so-good parts to let go of or renovate.
- We also customise scans to also include alternative dimensions and additional questions pertinent to your particular workplace context.
- Scans can also include spotlighting potential new guiding principles you aspire to integrate into your culture going forward to the future.
Download our E-book on 6 Dimensions for Creating CLEVER Cultures. Or check out our article on Assessing your Culture: Where to start? that takes you through steps for creating and customising culture scans.
Our Culture Services – guiding you through change
Beyond our general Leading Culture Clinic, we can help you scope, design and plan your cultural regeneration efforts end-to-end with a range of strategic change, vision-setting and action-planning activities to help you systematically think over the steps you need to transform your culture.
3 major areas we can help with strategic culture change and revitalisation are:
Often, the first thing to do is raise awareness of why culture matters and how crucial culture is to strategy, performance, productivity and well-being. Then equip people with tools and know-how to get involved in making it better. We offer online, live, public and in-house culture-education and awareness-raising courses for all workplace levels.
- Strategy and Culture for senior leaders – integrate, curate & cultivate
- Leading Culture for middle managers – model, monitor & motivate
- Cultivating Team Culture for team-leaders – believe, behave & belong
- Creating Constructive Cultures for staff – commit, connect & contribute
We convene cross-sections across your workplace to delve into what state your existing culture is in – to celebrate the strengths you want to keep, trouble-spots to clear-up, and guiding principles to integrate to take your culture forward. We facilitate activities you can do yourself, or with our help, such as:
- Strategy and Culture sessions for senior leaders – to map cultural directions and principles
- Creating a Cultural Manifesto – to promote participation in culture-shaping ideas
- Customise and conduct our CLEVER Culture Scan – to snapshot current and aspirational culture
- Cross-workplace culture conversations – to dialogue issues, actions and aspirations
- Dig-down to unearth core beliefs and tacit ground rules – nothing much changes without this
We help you identify specific actions at all levels of the organisation to get cultural renewal underway – to initiate, sustain and monitor it – and build your internal capacity to do it yourself. We do things like:
- Help you form and train Culture Actions Teams – to plan implementation steps and tasks
- Coach middle leaders – to model and engage teams in cultural reconstruction actions
- Identify organisation-wide incentives and social-media strategies – to support cultural renewal
- Nominate measures, milestones and success-markers – to see how your efforts progress
- Run culture-building clinics on new skill areas – to enact new principles and behaviours
See our Culture Change Services Profile and Creating CLEVER Cultures e-Book for some background perspectives on culture and insights into ways we can help you get started on cultural reconstruction in your team or workplace.
If you’ve 10 or more leaders keen to attend our Leading Culture Clinic, you want to run something tailored to your context, or you’d like to talk about ways we can help with your Culture Change project…. Get in touch through our online enquiry form or call Bill Cropper direct on 0429-687 513 to discuss and send us an outline of your needs…
Your Facilitator - a Brief Introduction...
Bill Cropper
Director
I’ve been consulting to senior executives, middle-leaders, culture action groups and work-teams to help rethink, renew and renovate their cultures for more than 20 years.
Come to think of it, most of my consulting assignments have had culture as either background or bottom-line.
I’ve amassed a wealth of on-the-ground experience in all sorts of work settings and contexts, designing strategies and processes to facilitate culture, as well as skill-up internal culture facilitators and mentor many executives to carry out their own cultural regeneration initiatives.
Culture projects I’ve had the privilege of helping with have included…
- Running Leading Culture Clinics for a host of leaders from government enterprises, education, hospitals, road and rail authorities and privates.
- Facilitating senior leadership teams to map out strategies, actions and guiding principles for cultural renewal
- Collaborating with many firms to create, customise and run Cultural Assessment Scans
- Working with leaders on better sizing fit between business results, strategy and culture
- Training culture facilitators to run culture processes back in their own organisations
- Running many different culture- building workshops as part of implementation support
- Producing a diverse array of culture guides and toolkits tailored these to many different workplace contexts
“Leading Culture was an excellent day of learning, sharing and insight. I enjoy how Bill facilitates and engages his audience – a relaxed format with a well-organised structure and the workbook is brilliant.”
Kerry R, Associate Dean, James Cook University
“Good overall package for leaders to work on business culture. I learned new tools and gained greater insight into how I’m seen as a culture leader. I think it’s starting to change culture in terms of better team-building outcomes and the coaching sessions I had with Bill were good, frank and honest”
Brett M Executive-Director, Housing Partnerships Office
Bill Cropper
Director
I’ve been consulting to senior executives, middle-leaders, culture action groups and work-teams to help rethink, renew and renovate their cultures for more than 20 years.
Come to think of it, most of my consulting assignments have had culture as either background or bottom-line.
I’ve amassed a wealth of on-the-ground experience in all sorts of work settings and contexts, designing strategies and processes to facilitate culture, as well as skill-up internal culture facilitators and mentor many executives to carry out their own cultural regeneration initiatives.
Culture projects I’ve had the privilege of helping with have included…
- Running Leading Culture clinics for a host of leaders from government enterprises, education, hospitals, road and rail authorities and privates.
- Facilitating senior leadership teams to map out strategies, actions and guiding principles for cultural renewal
- Collaborating with many firms to create, customise and run Cultural Assessment Scans
- Working with leaders on better sizing fit between business results, strategy and culture
- Training culture facilitators to run culture processes back in their own organisations
- Running many different culture- building workshops as part of implementation support
- Producing a diverse array of culture guides and toolkits tailored these to many different workplace contexts
"Leading Culture was an excellent day of learning, sharing and insight. I enjoy how Bill facilitates and engages his audience – a relaxed format with a well-organised structure and the workbook is brilliant."
Kerry R Associate Dean, James Cook University
”Thanks for a great couple of days. I’m very excited about taking future culture actions in my teams. I also thoroughly appreciated your engaging, forthright and frank manner as a facilitator and your magical skill of making such a complex construct relatively simple to understand”
Roslyn M, Defence Communities Organisation
“Good overall package for leaders to work on business culture. I learned new tools and gained greater insight into how I’m seen as a culture leader. I think it’s starting to change culture in terms of better team-building outcomes and the coaching sessions I had with Bill were good, frank and honest”
Brett M, Executive-Director, Housing Partnerships Office
Cost & Registration
Come along with colleagues to save more!
Fee Savings 2024
Click Register Buttons for Latest Specials
Live On-Location
-
$990$924 -
$880$858
-
$660$594 -
$594$550
-
$1100
Live ONLINE
Follow Register Buttons for Latest Specials
-
$825
-
$528$473
Note: In-House clinics recommended for 10 or more
Subscribe for access to free Resources, Articles & Culture Counts News
Register Online
The fine print...
- All prices include GST… Discounts apply from date registered
- Payment due on registration - pay by Card or by EFT (secure payment gateway provided)
- Pay online or on invoice within 10 days and prior to attendance
- Fees are non-refundable but may be transferred to an alternative event up to 14 days prior
- Minimum numbers required at The Change Forum’s discretion
- Venue: CBD venues confirmed on registration - Social distancing & hygiene precautions observed
- Inclusions: Tuition, comprehensive self-coaching Toolkit (light lunch, refreshments for in-person Clinics), intersession communiques, additional readings & slide-shares for online program
- Timing - Workshops: DAY 1: 9.00 am - 4.30 pm DAY 2: 8.30 am - 4.30 pm (arrive 15 mins prior) 1-Day Clinic 8.30 am - 4.45pm
- Timing - ONLINE: 9.30 am - 12.30 pm each Session (allow extra 15 mins before & after)
- All registrants will be added to our mailing list for additional resources, information and updates but may choose to unsubscribe, if preferred, any time after conclusion of the event
Note: Please do not attend an in-person workshop if you have symptoms of COVID-19 or have been in contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the illness and you are required to self-isolate. If a substitute attendee cannot be arranged and a course transfer is not feasible, a fee refund will be provided.
Coaching Better Leaders... Building Better Teams
Enquiries: Bill Cropper 0429 687 513
The Change Forum offers a variety of 1 and 2-day coaching clinics in selected regional centres.
Visit our on-line Course Calendar from time-to-time for updates on what’s coming up next
We offer individual Leadership Coaching in person & by phone
Our full range of Leadership learning & Team-building programs can be delivered in-house on request
Contact us any time for a chat about ways we might be able to help you
