FREE Tools to help your organisation’s leaders to connect and trust each other.

In this article, we address the culture change needs of complex public sector organisations as they change, scale and/or merge.

The Need

Across the public sector the rapid introduction of merged organisations such as multi academy trusts, PCN’s, unitary authority councils, NHS departments, and other overarching bodies has brought promise of joined up working and additional investment, to many public sector services nationally.

A promise that both demands rapid change and forecasts wins that mask the resulting pain points.

These initiatives also require a rapid shift in business practice and partnership working, that we can most closely compare to a merger or a scale-up in other sectors. Outside of the public sector, both of these can lead to failure when not handled correctly and so the change is often heavily invested in, in terms of support.

Supporting culture change

Typically, a predicted organisational shift in culture at this scale is accompanied by a redesigned board culture, a plan or policy for wider team culture change and the intentional adoption of organisational behaviours that bring the resulting ‘team’ together.

In reality it can feel like 2 (or more) organisations, striving to create a single culture.

We must not underestimate the challenge this brings to those in the new entity.

When we look at blended families, out in society, where people started out by loving each other (not being pushed to join up). Divorce is more common than success, with the primary reason stated being “parenting”. It is not a huge leap to see that the management style of organisations can clash when boards come together. We hear stories of leaders in conflict and even competition emerging about which team are best led, best paid etc. For all parties, this is costly as the entire system fails to recognise the opportunity to come together through joined up change, rather than resentful concessions.

For this reason, we are sharing 7 approaches that address the connections between people, which underpin growth and success cultures at scale.

7 Free ideas / tools for Organisational leaders.

We regularly work with partnership boards and managers to establish organisational cultures, through connected and trusting bonds at the partnership level and eventual culture spread to the wider team.

Here are a few of the key ideas we have been repeatedly asked to provide or seen the need to draw on in our work.