This was a question that I asked the agency Leadership Team in an offsite meeting at the start of the year.
We were nearing the end of a successful strategy session where I, as the new Managing Director, had set out my vision for the business. We had then reviewed our company values and the behaviours we wanted our people to display. We had also set our goals, broken down by the five facets of the business that we talk about. These are People, Performance, Prospects, Product and Process.
So, I casually said as we eat lunch, “how do we make it happen”? How do we ensure that every one of our 240+ staff live our values and behave as we want them to?
There was our afternoon agenda!
As the newly promoted MD I was planning to take the company offsite to talk to them about my vision for the business. This had to be the starting point of the process.
And it was. I talked about my passion for the business, my admiration of our staff and the work that they did. I talked about the future opportunities and I also set them a challenge.
My challenge was to join me on a journey to take them and the agency from amazing to awesome (my scale of excellent was heavily influence by Zaphod Beeblebrox (The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) that runs from good, through great, past amazing and peaks at awesome).
I explained what I would deliver for them and then I talked through what I expected in return. What I wanted was for them to live out values and follow our behaviours.
So the ground work was laid, now it is for the Leadership Team to roll it out.
The first area we are looking at is recruitment. If we want our people to live our values we need to make sure that anyone else we recruit fits our values. Our HR manager started to weave our values into our selection criteria and the interview process.
Next we will be looking at our personal development programme. We call it b.you and it is peoples opportunity to drive their development and their future. We need to ensure that it encourages and nurtures the values and behaviours that we want. As we were already into our 2019 cycle we agree that we would create a new b.you process for 2020 built around our values and behaviours.
One thing that is clear to all of us is that the Leadership Team must set the standard. If we do not display the right behaviours how can we expect others to.
When I meet new starters, I say to them that I want them to come to me and feed back to me anything that they see around the building that does not fit with our values and behaviours. I am even having them painted on my office wall.
We have relaunched our recognition programme and called it 'Superheroes'. We call it Superheroes as we all know that they come in all shapes and guises, always go the extra mile and often save the day.
The last thing that we are looking at is the environment in which we work. If we want people to be ‘Creative in thought and execution’ and also ‘Innovative in approach and application’, we need an environment to encourage that. By environment I mean both the physical and the cultural.
As a team we talk about little changes having a big effect. We have already started to make small changes to our physical environment and I have a personal commitment to make the cultural shift that will allow 240 amazing people become truly Awesome!
by Richard Wright
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