The whole story
Start with The Change Index. The Culture Index is a tool within The Change Index that enables accurate measurement of how well a culture is geared for innovation excellence, in a way that guides profitable interventions in team performance.
Conflict Management and Autonomy scores were lower than leaders wanted them to be. Both are vital to innovation (as innovation often requires people both to engage in disagreement, and work under their own steam).
Aurora cares deeply about people, but the Culture Index revealed that there was room to revisit what it means to be ‘caring’. The business had a tendency to avoid difficult conversations (in the belief that this was ‘kind’) and to micromanage people and situations. In addressing this, there was an opportunity to improve creativity and agility – and with that, revenues.
To explore this, in early 2020 we convened the entire business for Change Mapping to evaluate how they were working together, and what challenges and opportunities they were experiencing.
Over the next 12 months, we supported Aurora’s interventions through more Change Mapping sessions, Courageous Conversations training (a module from The Change Course) across the business, and individual Change Coaching and Consulting.
Then, we re-ran the Change Index.
Aurora’s scores increased across every single dimension and sub-factor of the Index – with most scores improving by over 10%. It was remarkable progress in so little time. It is even more remarkable given that lockdown meant no-one was seeing each other in person, so these gains were all delivered remotely.
Conflict Management and Autonomy, factors that scored lowest when measured two years previously, had some of the greatest increases of all. Speed to Resolve (a sub-factor of Conflict Management, to do with how quickly conflict is resolved) improved by over 12%. And Directness (a sub-factor of Conflict Management, to do with people’s level of comfort in surfacing uncomfortable issues directly with others) improved by over 15%.
Two years in, and to Aurora’s credit, we can say for certain that the work has transformed the business.
The key insights
- Culture and revenue performance are always intrinsically linked
- ‘Being kind’ to your people by shielding them from conflict is not being kind
- You can repair and renew the culture of a business even while no-one is in the office