Culture <> Brand Syncs
My approach to getting companies aligned across Culture & Brand is broken down into 3 steps.
Step 1 - Culture Audit
Est Time: 2-4 weeks I carry out a thorough assessment of your current company culture. Culture shifts over time, and without realising it you can lose track of exactly who you are as a business and how you work. I take you through my culture audit, to give you a clear understanding of what your current cultural DNA looks like, and how aligned your team is to that from Leadership down to Interns. What’s Involved? -Leadership Culture Survey (c.15 mins max per person / 1 week to complete) - Review of Survey to discuss outcomes and current view of culture from leaders (c.1 hour) - Employee Culture Survey (c.15 mins max per person / 1 week to complete) - Review of Survey to discuss outcomes and current view of culture from employees (c.1 hour) - Summary of current culture, alignment to that across teams and action points for resolving that
Step 2 - Brand Audit
Est Time: 1 week Following (or alongside) Culture Audit, I carry out a thorough, independent assessment of your employer brand as it stands today from a potential candidates perspective. You’ll get detailed summaries of what I perceive your brand to represent, as well as the impression I get of your culture as a business; effectively, what do I expect to get if I join this company? That can then be used as comparison against the Culture Audit to understand how the two align. What’s Involved? - Thorough review of external-facing content and material used to attract talent - Including: Careers Pages, Job Descriptions, Hiring Platforms, Social Media - Summary of conclusion and impression of perceived ‘employer brand’
Step 3 - Sync
Est Time: 1-3 Months This phase takes the longest, because the hard work starts when you make an effort to positively change what you’re doing. Depending on the outcome of the above two phases, we will have built a picture of where your culture and brand sit from a positioning and messaging perspective. I’ll sit with you to define what the action plan will be re: the brand you want to build, and how you can get alignment to that. Whether that means bringing the brand inline with your culture, or vice versa is up to you. But I will help you to achieve that. What’s Involved? - Review of both Culture & Brand Audit with People & Leadership team (c. 1-2 hours) - Agree on approach to alignment (e.g. Culture meets Brand or Brand meets Culture) - I return a detailed action plan for how you can achieve alignment in the way that you want - If needed, I can work with you hands-on and facilitate workshops, or support as an extra pair of hands in enacting the change that you need.
'Me-as-a-Service'
I work with Founders and People Leaders, typically in earlier stage startups as a flexible support function to your team.
Low Cost, Monthly Rolling
Designed specifically for early-stage companies, I work on a very affordable, monthly rolling basis with companies to offer maximum flexibility. Access me 'on-tap' when you need throughout the month (roughly 14 hours a month when at capacity)
Leadership Advice & Soundboarding
As a 3x Founder myself I've seen the challenges companies face when growing, particularly from 0-100 headcount. Founders and leadership teams can utilise me on-tap as an advisory soundboard throughout the month for anything big or small that might come up. Whilst that is usually related to People & Culture, my experience spans IT, Ops, Brand, Business Development (and therapy!).
Operational Support
My experience has always been early-stage. I know advice is only half the battle for founders in this phase of growth. I'm not just there to advise on what to do and how to do it. I'm highly operational. I'll research, implement, and embed tooling, processes and other structures around people & culture for you.
Workshops
Some example Workshops I plan or facilitate with companies. Depending on requirements these can be onsite or remote
Values & Behaviours
Est Time: 2-3 Hours Session for companies who are either wanting to create values & behaviours for the first time or needing to hit reset and sync from time to time. Depending on which it is I’d usually go one or two ways: Value / Behaviour Build Workshop focused on Idea Generation and team contribution. Through this session we'd establish core ideas for values, behaviours expected against those values and a team generated cultural code to live against. Value / Behaviour Alignment Workshop focused more as a retrospective type exercise e.g. stop/start/continue for behaviours. A great way to sync up where people feel you are against your values and behaviours and assess whether things have evolved, and from there be able to realign.
Vision & Mission
Est Time: 2-3 Hours Great workshop if theres new faces in the team, but also just to get everyone back and refocused behind the vision & mission of the business... Workshops would usually start with some goals-based exercises, followed by some exercises around roles & responsibilities; great for new team members or existing teams struggling to understand how they can best utilise each others skills. Great for improving collaboration and learning between teams. I would usually work with Founder / Leader on involvement here too re: storytelling session to get everyone synced and behind the goals of the business.
Culture Retro
Est Time: 2 Hours Great workshop to run to review past 6 / 12 months; successes, failures etc so that the business can learn and improve. Great thing to do when the team gets together. You can do this either focused on culture or general business success too which is fine. Usually I would do a retrospective session (Stop/Start/Continue) to gather action-based constructive feedback. I have a few variations of these. We would then jump into a 'democratic' style group discussion set up and mediated to ensure that topics are evenly and fairly covered. This is a great way of getting voices heard and people involved. I would then wrap up with a ‘who what where’ exercise to ensure we end the session with an action plan of what will get done, and by who. Great for coming away with something tangible.
EVP Blitz
Est Time: 1-2 Hours Great workshop to run for any companies wanting to check the pulse on their current EVP and how their existing team feels about it. This would usually be a mixture of idea generation activities, and retrospective style sessions to both gather feedback from what you currently offer, but also understand what else you could be doing to improve your EVP. This is a brilliant way of making your team feel involved with the growth and development of your business, but also incredibly useful for leadership to get feedback from the team on what you are offering them
