These days an increasing proportion of leaders know they want to create a collaborative, inclusive culture within their organisation. It's not just the right thing to do, it's also a route to sustainable high performance. But cultural change has a reputation of being difficult. Legacy ways of working are usually so entrenched that traditional change programmes don't work. The skills leaders need to change the culture (and make it stick) are rarely fostered within organisations.
My experience as a psychotherapist as well as an organisational psychologist means that I come with a different approach and toolkit, and a track record of successful cultural change.
A recent project
With WDI Consulting (see below) I worked with a large NHS hospital trust where deeply entrenched cultural problems were affecting patient safety and performance. We listened deeply to managers and staff and created a set of workshop spaces for people to come together in a totally new way, unifying around their shared purpose.
In these spaces, new leadership teams emerged and identified the big and small steps they needed to take together. Their cohesion and energy was noticed by staff and trust started to grow. We worked with internal OD staff to ensure sustained support for the leadership teams after our involvement ended.
From the CEO:
“We have found you to be hugely supportive, very encouraging and of course, highly skilled in the cultural improvement journey we are on. Thank you so much for all your hard work and support. You have demonstrated again just how skilled and engaging you are in supporting major culture change and I am so grateful for the support you have provided to us.”
My consulting family
Since 2010, on larger projects I work with WDI Consulting , a group of likeminded people all sharing a commitment to building inclusive cultures. We understand what it takes - we all worked in corporate jobs but 'escaped' at some point to take a different path, in depth psychology or holistic practices. We developed new skills and insights which we now bring back to organisations in order to catalyse and sustain change.