OUR CULTURE APPROACH

Methods of culture change consultants

Our culture transformation map has four phases of work


There is a certain order in the phases, but then again, every organisation is different. The work you have done may have taken you further on your culture journey. We work closely with you to adapt our approach to your specific needs.

Planning culture transformation efforts

Design Culture


Diagnose your current culture and define the culture you need to deliver your strategy.

When you define your culture change strategy you need three things:

  1. An understanding of where you are,
  2. An understanding of where you want to be, and
  3. An understanding of the journey you’ll need to take to get there.

Our Culture Design process provides the insights you need to define your culture strategy. It also lays the foundation for a targeted action plan to deliver your business goals.

  • Assess your culture.
  • Define your target culture.
  • Develop the Culture Blueprint.
Managing culture transformation in your organisation

Manage Culture


Develop your culture plan
 

 

You need to measure and monitor your culture as you would do with any other aspect of your business. We help you develop a Culture Plan to successfully pilot your culture work.
  • Design the culture narrative.
  • Identify, define and deploy the unique initiatives that will shape your culture.
  • Set-up your culture measurement approach and tools.
Leading your organisation towards your desired culture

Lead Culture


Turn your leaders into role models of the target culture


Too often leaders see their role as simply defining the new culture, rather than truly living and leading it. Operating at a corporate, team and individual level, we take your leadership team through a practical program to build their cultural leadership skills.

We support your leaders to become role models of the culture you want to see - to learn to walk their talk on a personal and collective journey.

  • Build capability to lead culture understanding impact on others using a 360-degree feedback tool.
  • Learn from role models.
  • Enhance team effectiveness.
Activate your team for total culture transformation

Activate Culture


Build the tipping point for change in the whole organisation

 

We design the best solution to scale up your culture transformation and form an unstoppable movement for change.

We build a combination of fully digital, hybrid, or facilitated solutions to equip your managers with the mindsets and tools to put new behaviours into practice.

We bring a playbook of engagement and test-and-learn strategies to define the best approach for your unique situation.

  • Maximise participation and engagement in your culture transformation at all levels across the whole organisation.
  • Skill HR/ Organisational Design / Communications to manage culture and be catalysts for change.

One of the first and most common issues that we find in our work with our clients is the lack of clarity about what culture is – and isn’t. So, we’ve selected a definition that is directly actionable, because it contains everything you need to do to shift culture.

Culture is the patterns of behaviour that are encouraged, discouraged, or tolerated, by people and systems, over time.


As humans, we’re tribal animals. We want to fit in, so we look for signals about how we are supposed to behave, and we adapt our behaviour according to those messages. That’s why our work on culture is strongly anchored in behaviours.

Culture is do-able

Culture is completely do-able. Organisations can actually manage their culture like any other enabler of the business. At Walking the Talk we’ve created a practical easy-to-use culture system with simple concepts and tools that give you everything you need to design the culture you need and implement it seamlessly.

Our work is based on a number of key principles, which we have learned from our experience of working on culture for over 25 years.

Start your culture change journey

We align culture with strategy

We believe in “culture by design, not culture by chance”.

If your culture does not fully support your strategy, you are less likely to achieve the results you want than if your culture and your strategy are aligned.

Make culture the superpower that boosts your performance.

Aligning culture with strategy

We work holistically

There are several approaches to encouraging the behaviours you want to see in your culture. Working on all of them simultaneously reinforces the message you are sending to your people, either consciously or unconsciously. That’s why we work on processes, systems, and symbols as well.

Maxmise your culture change work

We shift mindsets too

Many of our human behaviours are driven by our beliefs, our values and our mindsets. At Walking the Talk, we call this the BE level. Without tackling this BE level, your initiatives will fall on stony ground and the new culture will not take hold. We shift mindsets to shift behaviours faster.

Mindsets needed for successful culture change

We help leaders manage their shadow

With great power comes great responsibility. A leader, like a butterfly, can flap their wings and cause a hurricane. We call this the leadership shadow. Most leaders we meet underestimate the length and breadth of their shadow. Building awareness and capability at the leadership level to understand the cultural reverberations of their shadow is vital in our cultural transformation work.

The importance of strong leadership during culture change

We focus, focus, focus

This is another one of our little secrets: The more you embrace, the less you achieve. This may not be true for everything, but it certainly is for culture. If you try to shift too many behaviours and too many mindsets at the same time, progress will be slow and, in most cases, little happens. We support our clients to identify the most critical shifts that need to take place and we help them to focus their effort on this shift – to speed up the change – and almost nothing else.

 

Focus on culture change