The answer always lies in your people

  • Client: Aurora
  • Sector: Healthcare
  • Year: 2019-21
  • Project Length: 2 years

The quick read

You’re a people-focused healthcare business with a culture that prizes both wellbeing and individual responsibility. But after nearly 15 years of good to great business performance, your leaders know it’s time to reinvigorate the business for its next phase. Added to that, the senior team is experiencing some significant changes, and client demands are constantly evolving.

Could there be a link between cultural management and revenue performance? Absolutely.

So what do you do? Driven by the Change Index's psychological insight, you successfully design and build a culture that is fueled by human innovation - all during global lockdowns.

Then watch as cultural transformation also transforms your revenue performance, and you win an award in the process.

“The smartest people I have ever met in helping businesses harness the power they have in their people.”

Claire Eldridge, CEO, Aurora
The whole story >

What we did

  • The Change Index profiled how responsive and innovative the organisation was able to be, and why
  • Change Mapping helped the whole team to agree cultural strengths and weaknesses and identify development needs
  • Change Coaching ensured that leaders felt well-resourced to create, lead and manage the transformation process
  • Change Course upskilled people in conflict management and autonomy

Impact

  • Winner of the Business Culture Award 2021 for Building a Culture of Innovation
  • Profitability improved by a double digit amount
  • In two years, Change Index scores increased across every single dimension – with most scores improving by over 10%
  • Pitch win ratio increased nearly doubled to industry-beating standards
  • 74% of Aurora people now say that they are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ happy at work
  • New 3-year growth strategy
  • On-track to deliver three-year revenue target
"How do we transform our business performance by building a culture of innovation?"

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