100-year old institution renews culture & strategy for global social impact
Our client, a century-old institution and leader among its peers, was facing significant and disruptive culture challenges. By nature of its mandate and context, this institution needed to balance the objectives of various and disparate stakeholders. Nearing the end of their current strategic plan’s lifespan, they were confronted by the fact their people were struggling with organizational culture issues that were standing in the way of the institution reaching its full collaborative potential.
On the verge of acting on tactics which emerged from recent internal consultation with their people, the institution engaged the Tidal Equality team (then called Women’s Work Institute). We encouraged them to first better understand the nature of their culture problems and to press ‘pause’ on immediate action in order to make the right next step toward solving those problems.
Our Wave is a strategic-design process that engages the voices and perspectives of far more people than are usually consulted when creating new organizational direction and action. The first step in any Wave is to engage the target group (in this case, all employees) in a qualitative, anecdotal Insights Questionnaire. This questionnaire is designed to help us listen to and learn from the lived experiences of people in regards to a challenge they face. In this case, we learned the cultural challenges the institution was grappling with were the result of both systemic inequities, and an existing strategy which had not placed common cause at its core.
We engaged their people in two different large-scale strategic design sessions early in 2019, one focused on culture and one focused on strategy. In both cases, we had reframed the challenges faced by the institution’s people as opportunities to not only increase collaboration, innovation and equality of opportunity, but to enhance and improve their culture. We supported them in co-designing a renewed strategic vision, shared values, and clear, resonant strategic priorities that would support the organization in achieving that vision. We also equipped them to articulate the culture tenets that would form the foundation of a new organizational culture charter.
We presented these insights to the leadership in the form of a renewed Strategic Plan and Culture Charter in the summer of 2019. As we guided them in regards to internal communications around these documents, they were inspired to action on the ideas co-designed by their people. We supported them by designing a Tidal transformation and engaged their leadership ranks in a series of sessions during which we equipped them to operationalize these documents and communicate collectively on the new direction their institution was headed. From the day of delivery, the institution was putting the new strategy into play to build better results for their stakeholders, a more equitable culture, and high-impact strategic partnerships connected to the institution’s renewed clarity around its purpose.
CLIENT UPDATE, November 2020:
“With an 80% response rate [to our employee engagement survey], our organization had the second-highest level of participation in our institution in 2020 – a significant jump from 11th when the first survey was administered in early 2018.
We achieved the highest percentage change in most-favorable ratings (2020 vs. 2018) in several categories including job satisfaction/support; communication; collaboration; policies, resources and efficiency; supervisors/department chairs; fairness; and respect and appreciation.”