Inspiring Cultural Change

The brief was to organise and facilitate four full day Workshops in a 12 month period to develop and implement a New Culture within Asset Management.

We covered 4 key areas during this time:

1. Cultural Change

2. Collaborative Working

3. Building a Team

4. Supply Chain Integration

The attendees at the Workshop were Senior and Middle Managers selected by the Council.

Cultural Change: We developed a Culture for everyone within Asset Management to be proud of, covering all areas of the business. We created a strong Vision to replace the existing Vision with supporting Values and Behaviours. We addressed the challenges of Leadership to engage all personnel going forward in a proactive manner.

Collaborative Working: We removed the silo mentality across the Local Authority to encourage working in a

Collaborative manner. We provided an understanding and awareness of

BS11000 and its core principles. We built teams across Asset Management, encouraging ownership, accountability and empowerment to drive improvements. We removed self-interest and provided a greater focus on the collective success for all to share.

Building the Team: Our focus was to develop high performing teams at all levels across Asset Management. Our main focus initially was on Senior Management. The employees looked to Senior Managers for Leadership in this new era. Once again we looked at the employees as people with:

1. Skills and capabilities

2. Strategies and priorities

3. Team dynamics and trust

We introduced a 12 step plan for maintaining high performance, producing winning teams.

Supply Chain Integration: We looked to develop Asset Management into the preferred partner of choice to its Supply Chain. A fully Integrated

Supply Chain reduces costs while improving performance.

We reviewed where we are today and the root causes by introducing solutions to move forward. We commenced building and maintaining relationships of real value, monitoring and reviewing performance at key milestones whilst building relationships of trust. We worked on the notion that the Supply Chain is part of the extended family and everything they say and do is a reflection of South Tyneside Council.

Benefits

We have created a powerful and inspiring Vision “Delivering exceptional services for you today and tomorrow” with Values and Behaviours to deliver the Vision and for each employee to understand what is expected.

Employees now see each other as people and work more collaboratively across the business streams. Leadership skills and the importance of great leadership are now being appreciated and developed.

The silo mentality has been removed with ownership across business streams working together in 6 main groups driving improvements. Groups established from the main challenges and issues were:

1. Steering Group

2. Culture Group

3. Process Group

4. Public

5. Business Development

6. People

The success of the four Workshops has encouraged South Tyneside to involve other services into this programme. One year on and it is still very early in the development of Cultural Change. The green shoots are starting to grow into strong stems against the wind of change.