Empowering Innovation and Accountability for a Sustainable Future

5 Min. Read

Business Challenge

As a pioneer in the energy industry, this organization recognized that the world was shifting and that sustainability and creating a low carbon world were paramount to their long-term success. To maintain their position as leader and pioneer in the industry, our client wanted to shift their business strategy and brand from being an energy service company to a technology company: driving the technology and innovation to deliver low carbon emission energy to the world. 

With a committed CEO on board, this company understood that to shift their brand in the eye of the public and their stakeholders and deliver on that brand they had to change key mindsets and behaviors, while honoring what had driven their success over the last almost 100 years. This meant asking their 100,000 employees to think more strategically and focus on where they can make the biggest impact on their clients and the environment; recognizing that their people are world-renowned experts in their field, and the key to unlocking innovation involved supporting them to experiment, learn and grow; and, to attract and retain the best talent in the industry they had to respect their employees work and personal lives.

Outcomes

Walking the Talk partnered with this organization to develop a culture framework that gave credibility to the brand, respected the deep history of the company, whilst stretched the organization to its next phase. Working together with their Chief People Officer and central HR team, we completed 2 important phases of work:

Phase 1

Culture Assessment Analysis & Culture Framework: WTT completed a detailed desktop analysis which showed the positive and limiting beliefs in the organization and how they could evolve in service of the new brand. The resulting culture framework honored the behaviors that have driven their success in the past, and what behaviors needed to shift to achieve their new business strategy for the future.

Phase 2

Culture Strategy and Roadmap: The organization understood that in order to begin embedding the evolved culture in the organization, they needed a strategy and roadmap to follow. WTT delivered their culture planning process to recognize and prioritize the key pillars that would drive change in the organization.

Walking the Talk worked closely with an internal team to launch the Culture framework to leaders and all employees. A leader toolkit was developed, the culture framework was gamified to create awareness and understanding of the behaviors in action, a People Week launch event had culture at the center.

Phase 3

As part of our recommended approach to shift culture, WTT worked with the Top 225 leaders across the organization to work through our Lead by Example Program. Leaders completed a 180 assessment, 2 1-on-1 advisory sessions with a WTT coach, and attended 3 workshops to deep dive into the stretch behaviours of the organization.

Additionally, the organization prioritized the culture strategy and made significant changes to their performance management system, to align their KPI’s to  focus on the culture framework.

Bottom Line

• The culture framework was signed off in record time with high levels of enthusiasm.
• 250 committed leaders focused on shifting their behaviors through a Leading by Example program.
• A culture strategy driving systems change across the organization to support and encourage the new behaviors and ways of working- including performance management and recruitment.
• Awareness and Understanding across the organization of the change, and why this is critical to the success of the business through several events including People Week and the Culture and Brand Launch. 
• 86% of leaders participated in the LBE program felt they were more self-aware of their own behaviors and how people perceived them.
• 84% of leaders who participated identified or implemented actions to better model the new behaviors.