Often when organisations merge or create a new strategy, or simply decide that their culture needs paying attention to, we are asked to define their values or behaviours, and even help them to decide on what their purpose should be.

Sometimes we are helping to develop values from scratch; but more often than not, there are already some cultural pillars in place.  We run workshops and conduct research to understand what these mean to colleagues, what feel true to the organisation and what are a ‘stretch’, and how they are aligned to the future strategy.

The process invariably involves a mix of qualitative and quantitative research.  We often focus first on qualitative research to delve deep into the organisation and its culture; and then use surveys to verify the results on a representative sample of colleagues.

It’s important to make the whole programme as engaging as we can – after all this sets the tone for future engagement around the values and purpose.