springpoint

TRANSFORMING CULTURE FOR STRATEGIC IMPACT AT NTT DATA

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 02:45:22 GMT

NTT Data Australia is a global IT services provider, specialising in digital transformation, cloud, automation, consulting services, and SAP-focused transformation. Operating in a mature and highly competitive market, NTT Data Australia (Consulting) faces rapid technological disruption and evolving client expectations. As a professional services firm, most of its workforce is customer-facing, making organisational culture and capability critical to its success.

The Challenge

NTT Data Australia’s immediate challenge was to develop a strategy that could respond to external pressures while engaging the entire workforce. The organisation needed to evolve its service offering and core practices around client engagement, create a workplace that attracts and retains top talent, and maintain a culture of excellence, service ethos, and value creation. Key challenges included sustaining and growing revenue and EBIT, attracting and retaining talent, and improving customer experience (NPS).

The Work

Over three years, NTT Data Australia partnered to deliver a multi-faceted strategic alignment and transformation program:

Culture Blueprinting & Assessmen t: Using the PerformX diagnostic tool, NTT assessed its current culture, developed a culture blueprint aligned with strategic objectives and identified priority initiatives for change based on its aspired culture profile.

Annual PerformX pulse surveys were deployed to track and monitor progress around culture priorities.

Action Planning: Action planning at both group and team levels defined and activated the initiatives required to evolve the culture and address strategic gaps. The action planning sessions were also undertaken annually to ensure that initiatives and interventions were deployed and monitored over time.

Consultant to Advisor Program: A blended learning programme focused on uplifting delivery consultants from technical experts to strategic advisors was developed as part of the action planning outcomes. The program aimed to develop the skills for deep client needs analysis, building trust-based relationships, and co-designing value-driven solutions, which in turn aligned with the strategic priorities of the business – revenue growth, client excellence and value creation.

Growth Mindset & GRIT: The development and delivery of the GRIT program was also defined through the annual Pulse survey and action planning activities and was specifically designed to foster a growth mindset and resilience across the organisation.

Impact Aligned to Key Criteria

Integration Across Culture, Leadership, Capability, and Strategy

The culture assessment, blueprinting, and action planning led directly to strategic capability uplift through the Consultant to Advisor and GRIT programmes. By linking strategic outcomes with the aspired culture defined through the culture Blueprinting and action planning process, NTT identified and addressed gaps that would most impact their strategy.

Scale of Reach

The PerformX culture assessment and action planning activities were deployed organisation-wide, with team leaders trained in assessment results debriefing sessions and action planning. Over time, leaders have embraced the process, and it’s now embedded as a critical element of the annual strategic development cycle, ensuring broad and deep reach across the business.

Measurability of Outcomes

NTT tracks progress annually through the PerformX pulse diagnostic, as well as tracking strategic outcomes such as sales revenue uplift, NPS, and employee engagement. These measures are now part of the reporting suite, enabling holistic measurement and linking culture to strategy and performance.

Specifically over the past three years, NTT have increased completion rates of the PerformX survey from 77% to 93% of staff, and has seen significant improvements across all four culture domains in the range of 10 to 17 percentile points. This reflects not only the work being done within teams to define action plans but also a commitment to ensure these plans and initiatives, such as the Consultant to Advisor and GRIT programs, become a reality.

The impact of these initiatives is visible through the NTT Data NPS score, which reflects a change in customer excellence and focus, and growth in sales revenue through the ability of the teams to increase client value.

Sustained Nature of the Work and Program

The focus on culture pulse checks and ongoing assessment is well embedded, with team leaders actively involved in the process. The sustained nature of the programme is evidenced by its integration into annual cycles and continuous improvement efforts.

This program stands as a benchmark for enterprise-wide impact. NTT Data Australia didn’t just implement change—it embedded a culture-driven strategy that elevated leadership, capability, and client engagement at scale. With measurable outcomes in revenue growth, NPS, and retention, and a sustained cycle of cultural alignment and capability uplift, this transformation exemplifies how strategic intent can translate into enduring organisational performance. It’s a story of integration, reach, and resilience—hallmarks of true transformation.

" Creating an intgerated, data driven program that engages all staff creates not just a tipping point in terms of scale, but also creates a shared sense of purpose and challenge for an orgnabisation. NPA should be commended for their courage and ability to approach the work across all levels."

- Robyn Worthington

TRANSFORMING GLOBAL LOGISTICS LEADERSHIP

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 04:50:26 GMT

DP World is a global leader in logistics and supply chain innovation, operating in 78 countries and facilitating the movement of over 10% of the world’s traded goods. With a workforce of more than 100,000, DP World is renowned for its ambitious approach to digitalisation, sustainability, and talent development, delivering seamless end-to-end solutions for businesses across every major market.

The Challenge

DP World’s transformation journey began with a bold ambition: to evolve from a traditional port and terminal operator into a fully integrated supply chain solutions provider. This strategic pivot, accelerated by high-profile mergers and acquisitions, brought new capabilities and expanded the organisation’s global footprint. However, rapid growth presented significant challenges:

Harmonising leadership standards and unifying diverse, previously siloed teams
Embedding a shared leadership philosophy across a multicultural, multilingual workforce
Developing leaders capable of navigating disruption, leading change, and driving measurable impact in complex environments.

The Work Completed

Spring Point partnered with DP World at this critical juncture, co-designing and delivering integrated leadership and capability development programmes. The collaboration focused on three key leadership categories—frontline supervisors, middle managers, and senior managers—reaching approximately 29,200 leaders globally. The work included:

Culture Transformation:
Co-design and global delivery of “Leading the DP World Way” and “Working the DP World Way” initiatives, uniting DP World’s people under a connected leadership philosophy and enabling critical shifts in mindset, behaviour, and leadership practice.

Development Program for High-Potential Leaders:
The “DP World GROW” programme, tailored for high-potential leaders in the GCC region, offered premium learning experiences—certifications, workshops, expert speakers, psychologist-led coaching, 360° assessments, and capstone projects—to equip emerging leaders with strategic thinking and innovation skills.

Change Capability:
“Transforming the DP World Way” was designed as a bespoke change leadership training experience, strengthening leaders’ ability to navigate uncertainty and embed change capability throughout the organisation.

The partnership was intentionally designed to connect culture transformation, leadership development, and change capability, ensuring DP World’s strategy was at the core of every initiative. Programmes were deeply integrated, elevating leadership standards, behaviours, and strategic thinking across the business.

The collaboration has so far reached over 400 leaders across six continents and has been delivered in three languages (English, Spanish, and likely French), demonstrating the global scale and inclusivity of the programs. The “Leading the DP World Way” programme was scaled globally, supported by the quality of partnership and delivery.

Impact has been tracked through rigorous evaluation criteria including:

Alignment to strategic pillars during design
360° leadership assessments
Project evaluations and learner progress check-ins
Benchmarking against globally recognised universities
Ongoing coaching sessions

Results consistently exceeded industry benchmarks, with Net Promoter Scores and perceived value ratings well above sector averages. Leaders reported tangible gains in productivity, retention, relationships, and quality, and demonstrated real-world application of learning.

The partnership is ongoing, with continuous improvement cycles embedded in the GROW programme and associated leadership initiatives. Feedback, new learning experiences, and certifications are continually incorporated, ensuring lasting impact and sustained engagement.

DP World’s transformation was enabled by a deeply integrated, scalable, measurable, and sustained partnership with Spring Point. Together, they built a resilient, agile organisation, cultivating a pipeline of capable leaders and a unified culture ready to lead the future of global logistics.

- Robyn Worthington

SUSTAINING HIGH PERFORMANCE AT NOTE PRINTING AUSTRALIA

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 04:27:43 GMT

Note Printing Australia (NPA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia, entrusted with the critical task of producing banknotes and passports for both domestic and international clients. With a workforce of around 300 employees, NPA is renowned for its commitment to excellence and recognises organisational culture as a key enabler of its ongoing success.

The Challenge

Following a period of record-breaking results, NPA’s CEO proactively sought to ensure that this high level of performance could be sustained. The challenge was not one of crisis, but of opportunity: how could NPA maintain its momentum, embed its cultural strengths, and future-proof its workforce against complacency or stagnation? The organisation wanted to identify and address any emerging risks, particularly those associated with long tenure and the need for ongoing adaptability.

Driving Impact Across the Organisation

Spring Point was engaged to conduct a holistic culture review, using the PerformX Culture Diagnostic (validated by Deakin University) to assess the current state and identify key cultural priorities. This process involved the entire workforce, with a remarkable 93% response rate, and included deep dives by level, business unit, and demographic factors.

From the PerformX diagnostic data, a comprehensive culture Blueprint and action plans were developed, defining key interventions at enterprise, business unit, and team levels, with clear measures and risk planning.

These included:

Leadership Development: Workshops and group coaching circles were designed to uplift manager capability and embed a clear capability framework, ensuring leaders could drive and sustain change. This was combined with executive-level 360 assessments conducted using the LeaderX assessment tool to further develop coaching for top-tier leaders.

Strategic Clarity: Senior leaders participated in workshops to define strategic focus areas and success measures, with tools created to cascade strategy throughout the organisation.

Values and Behaviour: The entire workforce was involved in the refresh of organisational values, with a focus on defining and embedding behaviours—especially around respect and accountability—to set clear expectations and support a zero-tolerance stance on bullying.

Scale of Reach

The programme was truly organisation-wide, with the culture diagnostic and subsequent values activities engaging all employees.

Action planning was co-designed with staff and iterated with managers, ensuring buy-in at every level, and communication and engagement frameworks were reviewed and redesigned to reach every corner of the business, from top-down leadership to local teams.

Measuring Outcomes

Impact was rigorously measured using

Within six months, culture priorities saw a 10–15% uplift across all areas, already meeting full-year targets set by the Board.
End-of-year results showed continued progress, with action planning cycles embedded as a regular practice.
The roadmap included both lead and lag measures, enabling ongoing tracking of progress and outcomes.

Sustained Nature of the Work and Programme

The approach was designed for longevity:

Interventions were prioritised for both immediate impact and long-term behaviour change, with ongoing evaluation and support for leaders.
The culture change programme is set to continue through to the end of 2025, with NPA progressing remaining roadmap initiatives and embedding new ways of working.
Strategic planning is now an annual process, supporting the business to operationalise its priorities year after year.

NPA’s journey demonstrates how a proactive, integrated approach—spanning culture, leadership, capability, and strategy—can drive measurable, organisation-wide impact. By engaging the whole workforce, rigorously measuring outcomes, and committing to sustained change, NPA is well-positioned to maintain its high performance and adapt to future challenges.

- Robyn Worthington

ALIGNING CULTURE & STRATEGY AT LORT SMITH

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 03:04:01 GMT

Industry: Veterinary, Not-for-Profit

Service area: Culture

Lort Smith is Australia’s largest not-for-profit animal hospital, supporting Melbourne and Victorian pets and their owners since 1936. With an unwavering commitment to providing veterinary care to animals in need, Lort Smith has helped shape the landscape of pet welfare in Melbourne. Lort Smith staff and volunteers strive every day to be the animal hospital all of Melbourne truly admires and is proud of.

Having undergone significant leadership, operational and structural changes as well as a significant capital works program and the Covid-19 pandemic Lort Smith engaged Spring Point to assess and develop an understanding of the organisation’s current culture, define the aspired organisational culture required to ensure alignment with strategy and performance objectives, and define activities that will support the development of a roadmap to help inform and implement strategy, and strengthen the organisational culture.

What We Did

Leveraging our PerformX Culture Diagnostic we quickly deployed the online PerformX culture survey to Lort Smith’s 175 employees – achieving a 70% completion rate in just two weeks.
We then produced a series of culture reports for leaders and teams with a focus on linking culture to perofrmance using our PerformX framework
We conducted a series of 10 in-depth interviews with leaders to understand and prioritise the organisations strategic and performance objectives to inform our Culture Blueprinting process.
We successfully facilitated nine, team based culture assessment debriefing and action planning sessions with over 90 staff in North Melbourne and Campbellfield to overview results and draft organisational and team culture action plans.
Finally, we developed and presented a comprehensive board report including the survey results, culture blueprint and action plan to the Lort Smith board.

Diring our time we spent several days with the Lort Smith team to deep dive into their culture and strategic priorities and develop an understanding of the key drivers to improve both culture and performance. The total time ealpsed between project kick-off and final board reporting was four months.

Outcome

This initial culture assessment and planning work has enabled Lort Smith to align their culture priorities with their strategic planning and performance activities for the next 12-24 months including their action plan and culture assessment metrics. It’s also provided the entire Lort Smith team with the opportunity to contribute to the culture roadmap design and understand the critical culture drivers within the organisation.

EMBEDDING CAPABILITY AT DEVELOPMENT VICTORIA

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 01:56:48 GMT

Industry: Government / Development

Service area: Capability

Development Victoria is a government agency that partners with industry and communities to transform ambitious ideas into reality. Development Victoria (DV) identified the need for key tools that the business, leaders, and team members, could use to embed the framework in their day-to-day work. In partnership with DV, Spring Point reviewed the capability framework and produced a range of tailored, sustainable, and practical tools to support the embedment of DV’s capability framework.

What we did

As part of the project, we conducted a review of DV’s latest capability framework and delivered:

An uplift of DV’s existing capability framework, resulting in 4 capability domains, 4 levels of proficiency, and 18 behavioural capabilities
Mapping of capabilities to recruitment methodology to apply the framework to current and future roles
A Capability Framework Tool Kit including:
Capability Card Tool to identify employee strengths, areas of development, and development activities
70/20/10 Development Guides to complement 18 x newly revised capabilities including: 3 short-term, 3 long-term, 3 peer learning development activities and 6 bespoke coaching questions for each capability
Career Pathway Stories and DV Career Development Guide
Quality Conversation Guide and Process to support every day and formal coaching, feedback, and career conversations
Design and delivery of leader training sessions to launch and embed the new framework and project deliverables

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AT DP WORLD

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 01:18:34 GMT

Industry: Shipping/ Logistics

Service area: Leadership

DP World is a global logistics and trade company with over 110,000 employees from 150 nationalities, operating in 75 countries. DP World’s purpose is to make trade flow and change what’s possible for everyone. With an aspirational strategy and year on year commercial growth, the organisation identified leadership as a critical enabler for remaining a market leader in the global market.

To fulfil this, DP World sought support to create a leadership development solution that redefined what it means to be a leader at DP World, across all regions, and to establish a consistent leadership language and capability across the workforce.

What we did:

Through a competitive bidding process Spring Point were engaged to design three programs, The delivery plan encompassed essential components, including the creation of distinct leadership modules tailored to different leadership tiers within the organisation. These modules were designed to equip DP World leaders accordingly, with the ultimate view of enabling the 110,000+ workforce.

Frontline supervisors with the skills necessary to achieve sustainable results
Middle managers with the ability to organise team efforts effectively and allocate resources for maximum impact
Senior managers with the skills needed to translate organisational approaches into tangible and strategic actions .

The design process involved interviews, focus groups and workshops to conduct a thorough learning needs analysis. This was followed by a design phase consisting of the development of blended learning programs (including a range of participant touchpoints, grounded in adult learning science), and an initial pilot phase. Centred on themes around self-leadership, leading others, and strategic leadership, the programs have been successfully deployed, and are currently running as part of our scaled rollout phase across the globe by Spring Point's global facilitation team .

Outcomes:

Initial evaluation results have demonstrated scores exceeding key L&D global benchmark standards (Corporate University Benchmark - All), with current deployment locations including the UAE, UK, North America, South America, Europe and APAC.

POWERING CULTURE AT JETCHARGE

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 04:22:02 GMT

Industry: EV Charging

Service area: Culture

JET Charge, established in 2013, initially focused on supplying and installing Electric Vehicle Chargers to promote EV sales in Australia. What started as a service offering for Tesla owners in Victoria, JET Charge has since become the leading EV charging player in Australia and is expanding into New Zealand. Their team, currently over 100 people, continues to grow rapidly. JET Charge is at the forefront of integrating EV charging into the Australian electricity grid through innovative tools, including energy management, smart charging, and demand response. They are committed to local development, aiming to cultivate the skills needed for Australia's transition to a low-emission future.

Understanding culture at JET Charge

As a swiftly expanding enterprise looking to scale quickly to support the accelerating demand for EV charging solutions in Australia, JET Charge recognised the importance of cultivating an organisational culture that could power its strategic vision. JET Charge aimed to create an environment of diversity of thought, background, and experience, and at its core, employees who come to work excited and empowered – embodying qualities of humility, diversity, and ambition.

To embark on this transformative journey, JET Charge sought a partner capable of providing a comprehensive assessment of its existing culture and develop a strategic and performance-aligned culture blueprint to guide its growth. They wanted to collaborate with a partner proficient in not only diagnosing their current cultural landscape, but also equipping them with the insights necessary for effective monitoring, actionable strategies, ongoing progress, and clear accountability, ensuring a cultural evolution aligned with their evolving organisational needs.

What we did

Leveraging our PerformX Culture Assessment we swiftly deployed the online culture survey to JET Charge’s 165 employees – achieving an 80% completion rate in two weeks.
At the same time, we reviewed JET Charge’s strategy and conducted 10 interviews with senior executives to understand and prioritise the organisation’s strategic and performance objectives to inform our culture blueprinting process.
On completion of the survey, we provided facilitated leadership debriefing and data and reporting across all of Jet Charge’s functional teams as well as a detailed insights report covering the entire organisation based on results.
Finally, in collaboration with JET Charge's senior leadership, we crafted a Culture Blueprint outlining the envisioned organisational culture and its evidential impact on strategic business objectives. This involved identifying the performance metrics most pivotal to achieving organisational success and aligned to the diagnostic findings.

What’s next

The Blueprint is now being used to support JET Charge’s ongoing evidence-based culture action planning, enabling their leaders to develop the essential organisational practices required to manifest the desired culture.

As part of our ongoing partnership, JET Charge is scheduled for a 12-month 'pulse check,' wherein we will conduct a re-diagnosis of the organisational culture. This step aims to validate the success of the culture change initiatives and ensure they continue to align with JET Charge's evolving needs and aspirations.

SIX ‘MUST HAVE’ HUMAN CAPABILITIES NEEDED TO LEVERAGE AI

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 04:44:14 GMT

DEVELOPING EMPLOYEE CAPABILITIES FOR LEVERAGING AI NEEDS TO GO BEYOND THE TECHNICAL

In a recent global survey we conducted with our research partner i4cp (the Institute for Corporate Productivity) it was revealed that 52% of leaders didn’t think their organisation effectively upskilled or reskilled their employees in order to meet future job demands and opportunities. In the age of artificial intelligence (AI) we are predicting a critical need for organisations to recognise the hard and soft skills required to enable organisations to understand and effectively leverage this transformative technology to support performance and productivity.

Capturing benefit from technological innovations such as AI and machine learning often focus on the skill uplift investments needed in technical skills such as coding and development. However, imminent and widescale adoption of generative AI technology, we believe, demands the development of complimentary human skills to enable effective uptake and application on AI to create commercial advantage. Specifically, we see the need to invest in problem solving, creative thinking, critical thinking and stakeholder engagement and influence capabilities as being at the top of the agenda.

CAPABILITY CONSIDERATIONS FOR GENERATIVE AI ADOPTION

Technical Literacy:

A fundamental capability for leveraging generative AI is technical literacy. Employees should have a basic understanding of AI concepts, algorithms, and programming languages. This knowledge will enable them to understand the underpinning mechanics, assumptions, limitations and possible applications of AI to real work problems. Further, it will support employees to communicate effectively with data scientists and engineers, as well as help them to interpret and continually modify AI solutions and frameworks. Familiarity with machine learning principles, including neural networks and deep learning, is crucial. Additionally, proficiency in relevant software tools and frameworks, such as TensorFlow or PyTorch, is essential for employees to navigate the technical aspects of generative AI.

Data Literacy:

Data literacy plays a pivotal role in harnessing generative AI's potential. Employees should be skilled in data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation. They should understand how to access and prepare data for AI training, as well as how to assess its quality and relevance.

Awareness of data visualization tools and statistical techniques will help employees derive meaningful insights from data that support reliable decision making and related investment.

Ethical Understanding:

Whilst not a new capability, the need for considered development of Ethics as it relates to decision making with new technologies is of critical importance not only in protecting individuals, but also in protecting organisations and communities. Those organisation who seek to be on the leading edge of AI stand to make seismic productivity and innovation gains, but also stand to lose significantly where ethical considerations are not deliberately managed. Data privacy is an immediate and obvious consideration; what data is available is of often the first question but how is data being acquired and what are the implications, legally and ethically, for using it must be critical considerations for those organisations seeking to benefit from AI.

The potential implications for discrimination, inclusion and equity is also an immediate issue. This requires critical examination of inherent biases in data sets and more broadly, consideration of the role of organisations in ensuring their work and role in the business and broader community is not further embedding biases in immediate and longer-term data sets.

Finally, there will no doubt be many examples of technologies and products that will become available that may be possible, legal and commercially attractive, but that may require deep consideration of their connectivity to organisational purpose, community good, ethics and even morality. At the heart of this, organisations, leaders and employees should be asked to own the implications current and future of the work that they do and consider ‘what we stand for’ as a determinant for what we choose to develop.

Creative and Critical Thinking:

Generative AI requires two critical ingredients to generate significant value. Creative thinking and critical thinking. Creative thinking facilitates the ability to envision innovative applications of generative AI in their respective domains. Put simply, what problems could we point this technology towards?

Secondly, what thinking patterns and structured problem analysis practices are then used to identify flaws, inconsistencies and further avenues within AI generated content. This enables AI generated outcomes to be validated, iteration and fine tuned.

Emotional Intelligence Embedded in Design Thinking:

While AI models can generate content, the oversight of humans with highly evolved skills in understanding human emotionality will be critical. As a starting point, human centred design, a method used to support product design and problem solving more broadly, requires deep understanding of and empathy with people and communities. This anchors problem solving to the real needs and aspiration of people and communities.

At a more immediate level, the analysis of AI generated content with a critical eye towards EQ will enable modification of output to match the desired human response. This requires employees who understand individual and group needs, who can anticipate reactions to content and modify accordingly to ensure that AI generated content evokes the intended emotional responses.

Developing employees emotional intelligence will also help them anticipate and address ethical considerations and potential biases embedded within the AI model, further promoting responsible and inclusive use of generative AI.

Collaboration, Communication and Influence:

Effective collaboration and communication are crucial capabilities for leveraging generative AI in the workplace. Developing and capturing value from AI will not come from those who have amazing data spilling out of a black box. As with any change, there will be much resistance and an extraordinary amount of noise in organisations. Success will require considered collaboration of and between data scientists, domain experts, and other stakeholders to define AI project objectives, provide relevant insights, and understand business requirements. Clear communication will be required to bridge the significant gaps between technical and non-technical teams, ensuring smooth integration of AI solutions into existing workflows.

Employees should also be adept at explaining AI-generated outputs to decision-makers and end-users, facilitating understanding and building trust in the technology. At a much more practical level, the use of storytelling and narrative development will be critical in enabling AI generated content to be effectively curated and then consumed by specific target groups. Telling compelling stories, an age old capability, remains central to human connection.

These human capabilities, most formed and fine tuned over thousands of years as humans have evolved, remain critical to our future evolution and in this case, in the way AI is used in that evolution. For organisations looking to capture value, to ‘do good’ and to avoid potentially catastrophic commercial impacts of ill considered AI application, investment in these skills at scale is an emerging but largely ignored priority.

By nurturing these capabilities, and ensuring that organisational culture and leadership are aligned, organisations can unlock the transformative power of generative AI to drive innovation and achieve tangible business outcomes.

LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY IN THE AGE OF AI

mattdson74@gmail.com (Matt Dickson) — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 03:58:19 GMT

WHAT LEADERS WILL NEED TO KNOW, AND EMBRACE TO THRIVE IN THE AI ERA.

When it comes to technology and digital transformation, organisations are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) as a powerful tool to drive productivity, innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. Among the various branches of AI, generative AI stands out as a transformative force, capable of quickly creating new and valuable content, solutions, and insights. However, the successful implementation of generative AI within any organisation requires more than just cutting-edge technology. It necessitates strong leadership and strategic guidance to navigate the complexities of adoption and unlock its full potential.

Leaders play a significant role in the adoption and integration of generative AI within an orgainsation. A visionary approach, understanding of business strategy and objectives, and the ability to foster a culture of innovation are vital for leveraging generative AI to drive growth and success. By recognising the transformative power of generative AI and championing its implementation, leaders can revolutionise their organisations, enabling them to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape.

What types of leadership capabilities are needed to enable leaders to navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by this transformative technology:

Strategic Vision and Understanding:

Leaders will need to develop a strategic vision for integrating generative AI into their organisation's operations. To do this they'll need to develop a deep understanding of the potential impact and applications of generative AI within their industry and how it might align with their business objectives. By identifying areas where generative AI can create value, and by understanding what that will mean for their teams and work, leaders will be able guide their teams in adopting the technology strategically.

Governance & Ethics:

Governance and ethics play a significant role in deploying and successfully leveraging AI, and leaders must prioritise ethical and responsible AI adoption. Developing an understanding of the ethical considerations and potential biases associated with generative AI algorithms will be important to ensure that AI systems are designed and implemented with fairness, transparency, and accountability in mind. Leaders will need to champion responsible data practices, data privacy, and establish guidelines for the ethical use of generative AI in their organisation.

Change Management and Talent Development:

The adoption of generative AI often requires significant organisational changes. Leaders, and organisations for that matter, need to develop change management skills to navigate these transitions effectively. Organisations and leaders will need to be able to communicate the benefits of generative AI to employees, address concerns, and provide training and support to help employees adapt to the technology. Leaders will also need to identify talent gaps and invest in upskilling their teams to ensure they have the necessary capabilities to work effectively with generative AI.

Collaboration and Cross-functional Integration:

Leveraging generative AI effectively will no doubt involve collaboration across different teams and functions. Leaders should be aiming to foster a culture of collaboration and facilitate cross-functional integration. Teams should be encouraged to work together, breaking down silos and promoting knowledge sharing. Effective communication and collaboration between technical and non-technical teams will also be essential for successful adoption and implementation of generative AI.

Risk Management and Resilience:

Leaders will need to have a keen sense and understanding of the potential risks associated with leveraging generative AI. Being able to proactively identify and manage risks related to data security, algorithmic bias, and system reliability will be critical in ensuring success with AI. Leaders will need to develop strategies to mitigate risks and ensure business continuity. Cultivating resilience within their teams, promoting a culture of experimentation, learning from failures, and adapting to changing circumstances will also likely help drive adoption.

For organisations looking to successfully leverage generative AI, developing these skills and capabilities within their leaders will be critical. The shift towards AI within orgainsations requires both a strong strategic case for change, as well as leadership that has a deep understanding of the technology and data governance, can manage change effectively, are adept communicators, and understand the risks and the need for ethical standards in this new technology. With this type of strong leadership, organisations will be able to develop the organisational culture and employee capabilities needed to transform their operations to effectively leverage generative and other AI technologies as they arise.

Want to read more about the future of leadership? Download our leadership white paper.

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TRAITS FOR LEVERAGING GENERATIVE AI

mattdson74@gmail.com (Matt Dickson) — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 03:58:11 GMT

GENERATIVE AI WILL CHANGE THE WAY SOME OF US WORK, BUT ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE WILL NEED TO ADAPT TO ENSURE ETHICAL AND EFFECTIVE USE

As organisations seek to harness the transformative power of generative AI, cultivating a culture that supports innovation becomes crucial. By aligning organisational values and practices, organisations can create an environment that not only invites and supports innovation but will help maximise the benefits of generative AI adoption into their operations.

In this article, the Spring Point team have considered what we think the most important organisational culture traits are for leveraging generative AI, drawing insights from our PerformX Culture Framework .

Embracing Creativity and Innovation:
Organisations aiming to leverage generative AI should prioritize traits associated with innovation and creativity. These traits are represented by the Framework's "Adapt" quadrant. By encouraging and valuing innovative and creative thinking, organisations inspire employees to explore new ideas and challenge traditional approaches. This also involves fostering a psychologically safe environment where individuals feel empowered to experiment and share diverse perspectives, represented by the “Enable” quadrant.

A culture that celebrates innovation will inspire employees to push boundaries, collaborate, and leverage generative AI to explore new possibilities.

Agility and Adaptability:
Generative AI technologies evolve rapidly, and organisations must demonstrate agility and adaptability to effectively leverage them. Traits from the "Adapt" and “Enable” quadrants of the Framework are again essential. To leverage generative AI effectively, organisations should aim to embrace a growth mindset, where learning from failures and adapting quickly are encouraged. This involves fostering a culture that promotes experimentation, iteration, and an openness to change. Agile organisations can adapt their workflows and processes to integrate generative AI seamlessly, ensuring its effective utilisation across various functions.

Data-Driven Decision-Making:
Generative AI relies heavily on data, and organisations that prioritise cultural traits associated with analytical thinking and data-driven decision-making will be able to get the most from the technology. The "Deliver" quadrant of the PerformX framework highlights these traits.

Cultivating a culture that values data, evidence, and critical analysis will enable organisations to leverage generative AI's insights effectively. This involves investing in data literacy across the workforce, encouraging employees to make informed decisions based on AI-generated outputs, and incorporating data-driven practices into decision-making processes.

Collaboration and Open Communication:
Leveraging generative AI requires collaboration and open communication across teams and departments. Traits from the "Deliver" quadrant of the framework become vital for organisations to foster a culture that promotes teamwork, knowledge sharing, and cross-functional collaboration. Effective communication channels and platforms should be established to encourage the exchange of ideas, insights, and feedback regarding generative AI initiatives.

This type of collaborative environment will help ensure that diverse perspectives are considered which is crucial when it comes to validating and verifying AI outputs and prompts and will facilitate the effective integration of generative AI technologies across the organisation.

Ethical and Responsible Practices:
Organisations leveraging generative AI should also aim to develop a culture that prioritises ethical considerations and responsible practices when it comes to the use of the technology. The "Deliver" quadrant of the Framework highlights the importance of ethical behaviour and governance. Organisations will need to foster a culture that emphasizes transparency, accountability, and ethical decision-making when working with generative AI. This includes developing policies and processes that address issues such as bias, privacy, and fairness. By prioritising ethical and effective governance practices into an organisations culture, they can build trust, mitigate risks, and ensure the responsible use of generative AI technologies.

Generative AI could be transformative technology for many organisations, with the potential to improve productivity as well as enhance the way organisations and individuals work. However, organisations looking to leverage generative AI must cultivate an organisational culture that embraces creativity, agility, data-driven decision-making, collaboration, and most importantly in our view, good governance, and ethical practices. Without these traits, organisations will struggle to ensure they can create a culture that safely maximises the potential of generative AI and fosters innovation, growth, and sustainable competitive advantage in the digital era.

Read more about cultivating an orgainsational culture that aligns to strategy and performance in our culture white paper - 'A Revolution in Organisational Culture' or learn more about how Spring Point can help you define your orgainsational culture..

'DISCOVERING THE LEADER WITHIN' AT PEXA

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 06:54:40 GMT

Industry: Finance / Technology

Service area: Leadership

PEXA’s world-first digital settlements platform has revolutionised the way Australians exchange property. After a period of strong growth cornering the Australian market, PEXA has expanded property exchange and insights services internationally, and developed innovative new data-based services. As the business continued to grow and expand into new markets, leadership development was recognised as a key lever to ensure the success of PEXA’s strategic transformation.

Having worked with the PEXA team on a previous strategy development project we were thrilled to be able to to partner again to help develop and deliver a leadership development program that would support the strategy and business growth.

WHAT WE DID

Our previous work with PEXA on their People Experience strategy supported our understanding of the business, context and key leadership capability opportunities. Through our Accelerated Solution Design (ASD) approach, we conducted interviews and focus groups across the business to identify the right approach, key messages and ‘look and feel’ for PEXA Academy’s first leadership development offering.

Through a series of co-design workshops and activities a bespoke program offering (' Discovering the Leader Within') was created. Leveraging research, science and best practice centred on three layers of leadership: Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading Organisations, these layers formed the basis of three interconnected modules supported by a 180 Leadership Assessment, pre-workshop Learning Primer, full day Immersive Workshops, supporting Learning Tools and post-workshop integrations including Peer Group Coaching and a series of Learning Transfer Activities.

OUTCOMES

A pilot delivery of the program in 2022 marked the first successful offering from the newly established PEXA Academy, with 22 leaders graduating. The second Cohort of leaders commenced in April 2023 with plans for the program to be delivered bi-annually from mid 2023.

Along with the development and delivery of the larger program, particular aspects were identified as being critically important for all PEXA people leaders to be across. This led to the team also developing and successfully facilitating a series of 2 hour 'Leader Learning Sessions' to meet the immediate needs of the business, and create a shared language across the business for all of PEXA’s People Leaders.

SCALING LEADERHSIP DEVELOPMENT AT DAHLSENS

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 03:47:22 GMT

Industry: Construction / Manufacturing

Service area: Leadership

"The business cannot grow unless our people grow"

- John Dahlsen

Dahlsens is a family-owned supplier of building materials in Australia, and the largest builder focused merchant in Victoria and NSW. With over 140 years in operation and 35 trade stores and manufacturing sites across Australia and over 1,000 employees, Dahlsens is a unique Australian business and employer.

As a family business with a strong focus on developing people to support customers and community, Dahlsens takes significant pride in its training, ensuring people are continuously growing and learning to keep up with the ever-changing building industry. Dahlsens had also undertaken some recent acquisitions and mergers and so aligning what great leadership looked like across these new areas of the business was critical for integration and success.

In this context, Dahlsens approached Spring Point to help create an impactful Leadership Development Program . Centered on strengthening leadership practices and establishing a community of leadership across the country to support a strong growth agenda, we partnered with Dahlsens to co-design and deliver a bespoke program that redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader at Dahlsens.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point supported Dahlsens to create a holistic leadership offering, to help define, assess, and develop leadership, based on our science based and practice proven solutions. Our partnership commenced with the co-creation of a Leadership Capability Framework, based on the Spring Point PerformX framework , and tailored to the Dahlsens workforce.

With this foundation in place, we then co created the Leadership Foundations Program, which included our Accelerated Solution Design (ASD) approach – our collaborative and interactive way to designing leadership experiences at pace, balancing best practice with our client’s unique context. This was further enhanced by the use of the Spring Point LeaderX 360, to help participants gain deep insights on their leadership profile, relative to the framework, and inform how best to engage the development journey ahead.

Oriented to the co-designed Leadership Capability Framework, the Leadership Foundations program included the following signature elements:

Development of an Activation Session and launch pack to support communications, and engage participants upon commencement of the program
Launch of LeaderX 360 Leadership (Spring Point’s science and practice based assessment tool) Assessment to gather perspectives on current and desired capability
Creation of eLearning primers to support engagement with key content
Design and development of the immersive leadership workshops – including content, facilitator guides, workbooks and feedback forms for 4 modules
Development of learning tools and takeaways for the workshops
Design and development of structured learning transfer activities , peer-to-peer group coaching and supporting activity guides.

We facilitated the ‘pilot’ program in January 2023.

OUTCOMES

With the program launching in January 2023, the outcomes are still to be fully realised, however initial feedback on the pilot program has been extremely positive.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Spring Point will continue to manage the facilitation of the Leadership Foundations Program for the ‘enhancing’ cohort with Dahlsens, including monitoring the outcomes and program impact into the future.

Spring Point will also support future iterations of the Leadership Foundations program for Dahlsens ‘emerging’ and ‘extending’ leader cohorts.

DEFINING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET SCHOOL

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:04:05 GMT

Industry: Education

Service Area: Organisational design / Transformation

The Australian Ballet School was established in 1964 and over the last 58 years has transformed hundreds of aspiring dancers and produced professional artists of the highest calibre. The School has held a long relationship with The Australian Ballet, but is an independent entity with its own legal status, staff, finances and Board.

THE CHALLENGE

In the context of a drastically disrupted two-year period and a newly defined strategy, The Australian Ballet School was looking for a partner to conduct a complete review of the people structures and supporting systems needed to bring the strategy to life and sustain the school into the future.

Like many other arts organisations, the Australian Ballet School was impacted by COVID-19. This disruption across the sector, and internally created the opportunity to look deeply into the organisation, its purpose, function, and sustainability into the future.

With an intentional focus on recovery, rebuilding and creating a bright future for students and for ballet in Australia, the four strategic priorities for the school were defined as:

Education and vocational training
Operations and sustainability
Engagement and Partnerships
Governance

WHAT WE DID

To support the Australian Ballet School purpose and ongoing strategic direction we partnered with the leadership team in conducting a comprehensive Organisational Review. The scope for the activity included the development of an approach to undertaking the organisational review – with a focus on organisational capabilities, structure and roles required to deliver on the five-year strategy, as well as leading the execution of the organisational review, providing review findings, design options, a change roadmap and change plan.

Specifically the organisational review included

Project kick off workshop – including creation of an Evaluation framework and Stakeholder map
Full desktop review of relevant documents and external scan of industry and comparable fields
Whole of organisation culture diagnostic using the Spring Point PerformX diagnostic tool
Stakeholder interviews & group workshops
Thematic analysis of all data and data validation session
Insights & recommendations report
Operating model and organisation design
Development of a draft change roadmap and change plan
Final report with review findings, design options, change roadmap and change plan

IMPACT & OUTCOMES

Following the design and development of the change roadmap and plan the Australian Ballet School have now been able to prioritise and progress implementation of their five-year strategy, with a clear view on focus areas and outcomes.

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE AT FINDEX

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:03:38 GMT

Industry: Finance

Service area: Capability

Findex has established itself as one of Australasia’s leading providers of integrated financial advisory and accounting services. A critical focus for Findex, and many professional services firms, is the challenge to attract, develop and retain a high performing and capable workforce in a talent constrained environment.

THE CHALLENGE

Professional services, like many industries is being challenged to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape characterized by new market entrants, regulatory change, digitization and the global pandemic.

Findex’s focus and investment in learning and capability development had evolved and grown, adapting to variations in governance as acquisitions occurred. However there were critical challenges that needed to be addressed to ensure the capability development needs of the workforce were addressed and the employee experience at Findex was enhanced.

We partnered with Findex to conduct a learning function review that spanned their learning function and infrastructure with a view to defining how it supported their exceptional employee experience.

The desired outcomes for Findex included a much clearer value proposition and related delivery model as it related to learning, that would in turn support employee growth and career pathing, talent mobility, and retention and attraction. Defining how the model and offer would provide value and efficiency was also a critical outcome for establishing investment confidence.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point worked with Findex to conduct reviews of a number of activities to provide recommendations on the Findex learning function strategy and structure, learning tools, technical training and CPD, as well as the Findex leadership program.

We used this review to also provide insights and recommendations on emerging trends around employee experience related to learning, additional investment requirement and the associated business case needed to substantiate this, as well as budget setting and cost allocation recommendations based on industry standards.

Specifically, this included:

Development of an ‘Evaluative Framework’ describing critical areas / topics for analysis & recommendations
Development of a stakeholder and data gathering map spanning both internal stakeholders and external data gathering necessary to establish benchmark data
Identifying target organisations and conducting interviews with benchmark clients and organisations
Internal stakeholder interviews
Designing and conducting employee ‘learning experience workshops’
Data validation workshops to validate draft insights & identify any areas for further data gathering
Development of options and recommendations report, including high level operating model options / recommendations, key external emerging trends and learning practice insights, & insights to inform budget recommendations
Consolidation of options and workshop outcomes into final report detailing review findings, prioritised recommendations
Presentation of the final report and recommendations to key stakeholders.

OUTCOMES

This initial review identified several key activities required to enhance the learning function within Findex, one of which was to develop clearer understanding of the roles and responsibilities of employees in relation to learning and governance. We again worked with Findex to create and define a RACI model through a series of workshops to action this key recommendation as part of a project extension.

CREATING AN INTERACTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE AT DAN MURPHY'S

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 02:10:50 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Capability

BUSINESS NEED

The Endeavour Group, the parent company of retailer Dan Murphy's, was undergoing a major change from a structural and operational perspective. To support this change, they wanted to leverage an enhanced Customer Experience learning offering for new and existing staff that would fit the culture of the organisation. The aim was to to create an uplifting, fun learning asset that would provide an interactive learning experience.

THE SOLUTION

To create the desired experience for staff, a “choose your own adventure” style, interactive and immersive training video concept was developed, using a first-person perspective that seemingly places the viewer in the story.

Video was the medium of choice in terms of learning medium, offering the ability to capture attention, help keep learners engaged, and help explain complex topics. However, the challenge was to beable to keep learners engaged through video - as simply watching can also be a very passive experience where learners ‘switch off’ and retention is low.

Interactive videos provide learners with opportunities to engage with the content – switching them from passive to active learners. Prompting viewer interaction put learners in control, resulting in an experience which was personalised and responsive to their needs, meaning learners are more highly engaged, and retention is improved.

WHAT WE DID

The final interactive video content was based around the Dan Murphy's customer framework of: See, Say, Ask, Find, with Spring Point managing all aspects of design and production with the client, including:

Pre-production - Project plan, video structure, video script
Production - Talent Casting, filming, editing, animation and graphic overlays
Post-production & delivery - Interactive programming, sound design, testing, QA, and final output as SCORM 1.2 compliant zip file for LMS upload

OUTCOMES

Since launch, the E-learn has been watched and completed over 5000 times by Dan Murphy's staff as part of training provided to new and existing staff.

The skills and tools provided by the E-learn has led to a 4 point increase in the Service Advice metric as part of Dan Murphy's Voice of the Customer data over this time. This means that their customers are experiencing the benefits of staff who have greater understanding of customer needs, and the ability to provide great service and advice.

The E-learn has become particularly relevant and useful in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which meant that Dan Murphy's staff had fewer face to face customer interactions over the past few years, and so this provided a great refresher to build confidence in handling those interactions.

The training also received two awards at the 2022 LearnX Awards - a Diamond in the Best Simulation category and Gold in the Best Video category.

THE SKILLS OF GREAT HYBRID LEADERS

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 22:48:02 GMT

WHAT'S CHANGED, AND WHAT'S NEEDED NOW

The role of a leader has changed significantly over the past three years, requiring leaders to adapt and evolve how they lead, and for organisations to redefine what effective leadership entails.

Ambiguity and change driven by the pandemic and the shift to remote and hybrid working brought with it a range of well documented challenges. Many of these were novel, meaning previous rulebooks and policies were thrown out and leaders needed to navigate significant decisions based on the changing needs of individuals and teams. Central to this was discovering how to balance productivity and employee wellbeing – and while not an unfamiliar challenge, the context of a global health crisis, significant uncertainty, and severe market disruption certainly was.

Previously, flexible working arrangements, leave requests, and health and safety were largely governed and directed by policy. These were managed collectively by HR and experienced at a central workplace where leaders could lean on other functions and clear guidelines to manage these types of performance and work-related issues.

Very quickly though, leaders found out that new issues and questions, previously rare or not encountered before, now needed to be addressed daily. Leaders were expected to figure out how to ensure performance and well-being were effectively managed, while maintaining alignment to organisational culture, and navigating new work structures and individual circumstances. The added pressure of articulating a clear vision and maintaining motivation through continuous uncertainty perhaps presented the biggest tension of all.

The challenges were immense and according to Gallup, led to escalating burnout rates among leaders throughout the pandemic.[1] It also exposed many as not having the tools to lead in this new workforce dynamic. Recent research by Gartner found that less than half of employees and only 35% of HR leaders agreed that leaders in their organisations had the capabilities required to cope and succeed in the future.[2]

So what’s changed in terms of leadership over the past three years?

Hybrid work is here to stay with at least 40% of employed people regularly working from home [3] and 67% stating they would look for a new employer if flexible working arrangements were dropped. [4]

Many organisations have now accepted flexible working policies as a non-negotiable when it comes to retaining and attracting staff, which is heightened in a tight talent market. This requires new practices for leading and managing remote and hybrid teams, and organisations have a responsibility to support leaders through these changing demands.

Location matters in managing performance and connection

Leading a remote or hybrid workforce creates a different dynamic for managing performance. With reduced visibility of day-to-day behaviour, performance monitoring becomes more reliant on outcomes. Many organisations have adopted the position that as long as the work gets done, it doesn’t matter where (and to a lesser extent how) it gets completed. Difficulty can emerge when work becomes increasingly transactional, and this represents a critical risk to those wanting to retain elements of workplace culture and connection now that mechanisms for meaningful collaboration require a rethink.

Within organisations, different perspectives on when (and for how much time) teams should connect will need to be navigated. Leaders will need to thoughtfully design what happens during that connection time to earn the commute, and be equipped with a clear narrative as to why it matters. Managing and leading this ‘in office’ experience and what it means to be at work will be a new planning activity for ongoing focus, and demand a new degree of emotional intelligence to create the conditions for performance and health.

The importance of connection, both to the work and between team members, is even more crucial when considering the impact on talent retention. Research from 2021 found that 57% of workers felt less connected to their co-workers when the work from home shift happened [5]. We also know that building strong relationships at work is a significant driver of job satisfaction [6] and conversely feeling disconnected from one's colleagues is a significant driver of employee attrition. Aligned to this is the view that lonely employees have a higher risk of turnover, lower productivity, more missed days at work, and lower quality of work.[7]

How leaders design meaningful connections, and how effectively this is leveraged for both engagement and performance, will be a critical task as employee expectations and the competitive talent market persists.

Communicate often and honestly

With employees spending more time working remotely, opportunistic catch ups and conversations are less frequent. This requires leaders to be increasingly proactive in making themselves available, and establishing consistent individual and team check-in rhythms. According to a Gallup study, a 15 minute team member check in, once per week, is associated with higher engagement and a lower likelihood to quit. And it doesn’t matter whether leaders are checking in face to face, over the phone or via a chat app.[8]

With less face-to-face time, leaders need to be increasingly transparent, thoughtful, and frequent with communication to ensure teams feel connected and informed. Those who don’t are at risk of creating a disconnect between employee and employer, which can lead to increased feelings of stress, ’quiet quitting’ and burnout.

Physical distance can transform into strategic distance, if leaders don’t increase their time making meaning for team members and creating alignment between individual activity and strategy. Recognition and celebrating success also become increasingly important in the absence of informal, daily cues regarding on track / off track performance.
Focus on team building, trust, acceptance, and collaboration

More than ever, leaders will need to take an active role in team building and collaboration and creating an environment of trust and acceptance. Central to this is the ability to foster psychological safety where experimentation and speaking up is safe for team members, and diversity is celebrated as a source of competitive advantage.

Team building and collaboration in hybrid work environments takes thoughtful planning, dedication and empowerment of team members to discover how they can best collaborate and engage with their teammates. Finding the right balance between coaching, managing, and providing space to explore will be accentuated even further in the new world of work.

Capabilities of effective hybrid leaders

Using the Spring Point LeaderX Framework, we looked at defining which core capabilities are necessary for successful hybrid leaders, and what organisations should be looking for when it comes to defining leadership strategy, recruiting high calibre talent, or initiating development activities.

Here are 4 critical leadership capabilities for leading a hybrid workforce.

1. Aligns people to purpose

Leaders need to define and articulate a compelling organisational purpose, and help team members discover their personal connection within it. This is not a set and forget activity, but requires ongoing dialogue and reinforcement. By clearly linking work tasks to the purpose of the organisation, leaders can create meaning for team members, and drive commitment and connection, regardless of ‘where’ work happens.

Sharing common ground with the organisational purpose is an increasingly strong expectation for the next generation of global workers. In fact, recent research conducted by NAB showed that 23% of employees who were planning on leaving their employer cited a lack of connection to purpose as a key reason for their decision to move on. [9]

2. Creates change readiness

In times of ambiguity, leaders who can instil confidence and comfort will excel. As the rate of disruption and business reinvention continues to increase, leaders need to create agile and empowered teams who are ready to embrace uncertainty, explore new ways of working, and develop new capabilities.

Successful change leaders will implement systems and tools that support change readiness, involve team members in change efforts to maximise commitment, crowdsource diverse viewpoints, and effectively communicate the ‘why’ behind shifting priorities. Fundamental to this, is a deep appreciation of the human side of change, and the skill to overcome resistance. This is relevant not only as it relates to business, digital and operating model transformation, but as we continue to optimise how we work within and across teams in hybrid working environments.

3. Empowers people and teams

Effective hybrid teams require autonomy and true empowerment. This requires leaders to establish clear roles, responsibilities and performance expectations, and have the fortitude to step back and trust teams to deliver. Central to this is empowering those closest to the work to make decisions, and providing team members with the confidence and ability to do so. This confidence is born from a leader’s ability to foster a culture of psychological safety, where team members are comfortable experimenting with new situations and learning from the inevitable roadblocks they encounter.

Great hybrid leaders are those who expertly balance the tension between establishing clear guardrails, providing space to deliver, and leaning in to coach and support - only when needed.

4. Collaborates Cross Functionally

Effective hybrid leaders will not only need to be great collaborators themselves, but cultivate this skill and habit across their teams. Role modelling relationship building and stakeholder management, and brokering strategic partnerships across functions, is central to value creation and efficiency in hybrid working environments.

This is underpinned by the ability of leaders to continuously set (and reset) clear team goals that identify cross functional dependencies, and inform how we work across boundaries. Those with the emotional intelligence to engage people with different disciplines, experiences, and goals, and to discover mutual objectives and working rhythms, will create higher performing and better connected teams.

Building hybrid leadership capability into an organisation

Developing hybrid leadership capability starts with a clear understanding of the current leadership profile within your organisation. Quality leadership diagnostics will highlight strengths and opportunities in your current leadership structures, and when measured against a proven leadership framework or strategy, will enable you to make informed decisions about priority areas of focus. A leadership strategy should be able to answer questions such as:

What individual and collective leadership capabilities are needed to deliver on our strategy?
What is our current leadership profile, and how is it helping or hindering our performance?
What combination of human and technical leadership capability is most important for our direction?
What aspects of leadership require prioritised focus, for now and in 3-5 years time?
How will we develop our critical leadership areas?
How will we know if our leadership development activity will have the intended impact?

The ability to lead hybrid teams has now become a critical leadership pathway. Market leading organisations are now galvanising around a clear leadership strategy - one that defines the capabilities needed to not only lead hybrid teams, but deliver on business strategy and enable the intended culture for sustaining competitive advantage. Not only is effective leadership a business imperative, it’s an employee expectation, and those who apply consistent focus today, will be the market leaders of tomorrow.

Read more about the future of leadership in our w hite paper - 'A Time for Leadership' or learn more about how Spring Point can help you develop your leadership strategy .

Gallup (2021). Manager Burnout Is Only Getting Worse.
Gartner (2022) Evolve Culture and Leadership for a Hybrid World
Australian Bureau of Statistics - 2021
Staples Workplace Survey Results 2019.
Pew Reserach Centre (2020). How Coronavirus Has - and Hasn't - Changed the way we work.
Institue of leadership management 2020 - New Decade, New Direction
CIGNA (2020) Lonliness and the workplace report
Buckingham (2022). Love and Work
NAB Behavioural Insights - The changing workplace - attitudes to jobs, working from home & barriers to returning to the office – April 2022

BLUEPRINTING A PERFORMANCE CULTURE

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 23:34:13 GMT

Industry: Government / Regulatory Authority

Service area: Culture

OPPORTUNITY

A Victorian Government Statutory Authority approached Spring Point to run an organisational culture diagnostic following a period of significant change within the organisation. The aim of the work was to help leadership understand the current state of their culture as well as define and plan the implementation of the ideal future state for their culture for ongoing success. Ensuring that their employees had the opportunity to contribute and be heard through the process was a critical outcome, as was the need for the process to define and direct tangible actions and outcomes.

WHAT WE DID

Over the initial 3 months of the engagement, we partnered with our client to:

Deploy the Denison Organisational Culture Diagnostic tool to generate quantitative and qualitative data and insights which were shared with all staff, through both organisational and divisional debriefs.
Develop a ‘desired state’ culture Blueprint through conducting in-depth 1-on-1 interviews with the Senior Executive Committee, as well as refine and distribute broader online surveys for People Leaders.
Facilitate a series of ‘bottom up’ action planning workshops involving staff across all divisions, as well as senior Executives, to define actions and activities that would help achieve the future state culture ambition.

OUTCOMES

Since our engagement with the client began we’ve been upskilling the People & Culture team to be able to run and facilitate further action planning sessions and solution design activity. More importantly though, through the creation of the organisational and divisional culture blueprint and action plans, our client has been able to effectively define and prioritise the most important activities and changes to implement, with an evidence based view on what impact the changes should have on the organisation and its people.

WHAT'S NEXT

Our client is now looking to develop a final change plan and project, and will launch a pulse check survey and assessment to better understand the impacts of the initial engagement, and ensure that progress towards their future culture state, and improved performance, is on track.

SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE & STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AT COLES

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 01:13:10 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Transformation

BUSINESS NEED

The Property Division at Coles plays an important role in sustaining profitable growth and business performance. In the context of a new divisional structure and appointment of a GM for Property, Coles sought support to maintain and strengthen the contribution of the division through the development of a new strategy and respective performance expectations.

t We Di
WHAT WE DID

Specifically, we partnered with Coles Property to:

Develop an appropriate strategy refresh and planning process
Facilitate key strategy planning sessions and as an outcome of those sessions, shape a refreshed strategy, and related priorities and plans
Support appropriate cascade of plans and priorities through the team in a way that engages and clarifies priorities
In step with this work, develop clear leadership and behavioural markers to help guide high performance that is enabled by collaboration, accountability, commitment and engagement.

ONGOING SUPPORT

Since completion of the strategy and planning activity we've continued to partner with Coles Property in supporting leadership and capability development activities with their expanding team.

WHY YOUR CULTURE CHANGE PROGRAM WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY FAIL!

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 23:47:07 GMT

O r, THE 7 THINGS TO STOP DOING IF YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

The last 30 years has been littered with failed culture change efforts. Most you won’t have heard about, but some (e.g. Enron, Uber, Walmart) have become etched into corporate folklore.

As a practitioner in the organisational performance area, with footing in both practice and research, it appears to me that our progress in implementing successful culture change is unnecessarily slow. In our recent Australian State of Organisational Culture survey, we found that 97% of organisations were talking about culture as a priority, and 83% of organisations felt that interest in culture was increasing among their board and C-suite leaders. The evidence linking culture with organisational performance has been clearly established, and boards and C-suite leaders are growing in their commitment to generating culture changes necessary to enable their strategy. However, our research and experience of what and how organisations are responding to this suggests a deep divide between executive commitment and aspiration to change, and the actual practices organisations are investing in and implementing to generate and sustain real change.

What to STOP now!

If you are a CEO or CPO contemplating culture change effort and investment, here are some key considerations based on significant research and extensive practice.

Stop entertaining the notion that culture can’t be defined and measured.
Organisational culture is more than the ‘vibe’ and it can be defined and measured accurately and used to support planning and monitoring of change. In fact, there are well defined areas of culture that predict the likelihood of specific business performance outcomes.
Stop thinking engagement and culture are the same, they’re not.
Boards and Executive teams have been misled into believing employee engagement is the same thing and is ‘the measure’ of all things people and culture.

Engagement measures how people ‘feel’ about the place they work – and provides management with a temperature check of their employee's mood. A good culture framework and diagnostic measures how an organisation works to deliver its strategy, services and to adapt to change.

If you are seeking to establish a culture that is aligned to and enables your strategy, don’t start with engagement. An uncomfortable truth is that many leaders and employees do not see employee engagement diagnostics and related processes as central to the way they plan, run, and monitor the health of their business. They often see it as a HR led activity. In some (not all) cases, employee engagement work is gamed as it does not obviously connect to the operation and improvement of core business and work practices.
Stop developing a budget that covers the measurement of culture but allocates zero towards efforts to implement and act.
It is common to see an organisation spend anywhere between $50-$200k measuring their culture but have no provision or plan for how to take action thereafter. The result, unsurprisingly, is…..no change. Or worse. An assessment or diagnostic is the first step in defining and implementing a performance strategy for an organisation. In isolation it is nothing more than some interesting data on a report.
Stop developing corporate culture change plans amongst executive and senior leaders, they don’t work.
If a cultural change effort is not made meaningful at a local level, where the teams that do the work and interact with customers/stakeholders to deliver services and value operate, then it will be irrelevant to those people.

Most employees are committed to delivering their core work well; and understand intimately the work practices and activities they undertake each day. Action planning that does not involve these people, especially local line managers, will not result in scaled or sustainable cultural shifts. The role of executives to steward, support and advocate for cultural shifts is important, but it’s not where the lion share of effort, engagement and investment should be focussed….but usually is.
Stop overinvesting in values work.
With good intentions, efforts to ‘do something about the culture’ often get reduced down to ‘let’s (re)define and (re)embed our values’. Over the years, millions, probably billions of dollars have been invested in efforts to change the values and mindsets of employees because we have come to know that these mental constructs (values) are the root of our expressed ebehaviours and culture. Whilst this may be true, values are difficult to work with as the key/only driver of culture change as they are very difficult to define in a way that shared understanding is established. This extends to difficulty in measuring and monitoring progress, and as an extension, embedding accountability to values is challenging.

More importantly, whilst changing the values and/or mindset of employees seems to be a way to target the ‘root cause’ of cultural issues, people don’t really respond to ‘values change’ work particularly well. Research has shown that adults change their ways of thinking when faced with personal experiences that challenge what they have been doing or present another, previously hidden path or way of operating. The path to change then is largely through ‘doing’ and ‘experience’. Focussing on work practices, specific behaviours and habits (ways of working), perhaps coupled with some key tools to support these new actions has proved much more effective in generating sustainable cultural change.

I love the quote from Robert Buckminster Fuller, one of the preeminent thinkers of the 20th century who summed it up nicely “You can’t change the way people think, all you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change their thinking.” In summary, get practical with cultural change actions that relate to everyday tasks and work that matter.
Stop doing everything, and overtly connect culture to strategy.
Most organisations develop culture without overtly connecting it to the performance priorities of the organisation or industry in which they operate in.

When strategy and successful strategy execution is the starting point, that helps reveal and define the cultural priorities necessary to deliver the strategy. This also helps to rationalise the prioritisation of just 3 or 4 areas of cultural focus and builds commitment through this logical framing. This contrasts with work that assumes that the connections between ‘culture’ and the day-to-day priorities of leaders and teams will be either considered or understood.
Stop using poor frameworks and diagnostics.
There are very good culture frameworks and diagnostics out there, but they are outnumbered 10:1 by poor ones and the poor ones are often very prominent in the marketplace. The most common challenges are that employee engagement measures and providers often masquerade as culture framework and diagnostic providers.

One common challenge is the need for culture work to be easily accessible and relatable to how people and teams do work and business every day. If the framework you are using is using language and terms that are confusing or overly psychological in nature and are not easily understood by a year 11 or 12 student, then you are creating something that will not be understood by most employees who are probably more interested in their core job. If your preferred tool requires accreditation to use and understand it, you should be very worried.

Finally, you should understand what evidence and research underpins the framework and diagnostic. We are constantly surprised to see organisations use tools that are underpinned by personality research (problem being that a company is not a person), or that are designed by the organisation with no view to the 30 years of research in this area. If you want to engage your organisation in culture work that is actionable and focussed on improving organisational performance (i.e. customer experience, sales and growth, innovation and agility in the market place, effective risk management, efficiency and profitability, employee retention and experience etc.), then look to see how that tool and framework has been shown to predict those outcomes. Most are not based on performance outcomes, and as such struggle to lift the focus of culture to a strategic level….which is what our board and executives are seeking help with.

Culture is a performance lever, use it!

Culture and performance go hand in hand and are great predictors of each other. Effectively assessing and defining how your organisational culture can contribute to your strategy and performance is a growing concern and priority for most CEO’s.

Learn more about linking organisational culture to performance and download our white paper.

IS YOUR ORG CULTURE RIGHT FOR DIGITAL ACCELERATION?

mattdson74@gmail.com (Matt Dickson) — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 03:17:21 GMT

assessing cultural readiness for digital transformation.

The Covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented catalyst for organisations to fast-track or start their digital transformation activity. For some organisations, the pandemic meant an acceleration or their existing plans – while for others it meant defining and delivering significant unplanned change.

91% of organisations who accelerated digital transformation effort during the first 12 months of the pandemic say they will maintain their pace or accelerate further in the coming years
55% of organisations were not able to accelerate digital initiatives and stay productive at the same time during the pandemic
28% say they have been able to transform as fast as they needed to over the past year. [1]

Importantly, 53% of business leaders recognised that creating a culture that supports digital transformation needs to be a key priority required to facilitate an acceleration of digital transformation [1]. Specifically, organisational cultures need to evolve to better support digital efforts and agility within the organisation.

But what does this look like in reality?

Research undertaken by Capgemini pre-pandemic found that organisations that manage digital transformation well, generally have a profile that favours: [2]

Customer centricity
Innovation
Data driven decision making
Collaboration
Digital-first mindset
Agility & flexibility

When we take these elements and overlay them onto our own PerformX Culture Framework we’re able to easily identify the common behaviours and practices that digital ready organisations display.

How do you figure out if you’re ready?

With large variances in the views of leaders and employees across some of the core “readiness” traits, relying on just a leadership view of readiness could be misplaced. There are a number of tell-tale signs that might indicate whether your organisation is ready to accelerate digital transformation activity, or whether there may be a need to review and align before successful acceleration can occur.

With much of the transformation over the last couple of years being forced rather than planned, assuming that your organisation is ready to accelerate based on past experiences might not ensure continued success.

Taking a people and culture pul se check will help determine where your people are on their transformation journey and enable your organization to reset or re-calibrate before accelerating.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do your people have strategic clarity?

Are your immediate business needs almost always complimentary to our longer term strategy?
Does your organisational strategy make your priorities and objectives clear?

Do you have a focus on the future?

Are strategic options and opportunities regularly explored by scanning the external environment?
Do important decisions consider future scenarios and seek to enable strategic agility for if/when opportunities emerge?
Do you take business continuity planning is taken seriously?

Are your people and teams empowered and trusted?

Are your people and teams involved in shaping changes that impact them?
Are roles and responsibilities explicit and understood, and is everyone held to account?
Does decision-making rest with those closest to the work?

Do your people and teams collaborate effectively?

Is the way teams work in your organisation valued and consciously managed to enable high performance?
Is collaboration across your organisation the norm and are you effective at it?

Is change well accepted and managed?

When it comes to change, does your organisation pla n ahead and provide the resources and support needed to make change successful?
Is communication of significant potential changes never a surprise; and do your leaders help prepare people and teams in advance

Is customer focus important?

Is gathering customer feedback a priority and happen regularly?
Does customer feedback often result in changes or additions to your services or products?

Do you value delivery excellence?

Do you regularly explore and improve inefficient processes/practices?
Is decision making always supported by data and insights?

If there are weaknesses or areas for improvement that you can identify through these quick questions, then it may be worthwhile taking stock, and working to define how you can evolve your organisation culture to ensure the success of your transformation activity and spending. A culture assessment or diagnostic could be a great place to begin to understand your current state, and help you define what your future state culture may need to look like.

Want to read more about how to assess your culture and how you can begin to evolve your culture to align to your org strategy and performance objectives?

References:

Harvard Business Review | Analytic Services - Pulse Survey | Digital Acceleration Redefines the Future of Work - 2022
Capgemini Consulting | The Digital Culture Challenge: Closing the Employee-Leadership Gap - 2018

CREATING A COMPELLING EVP FOR CHANGING TIMES

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 03:00:06 GMT

Industry: Travel / Insurance

Service area: Transformation

CONTEXT AND CHALLENGE

Following significant workforce disruption due to the global pandemic, our client, an iconic Australian organisation, experienced a clear office culture shift from ‘always in’ to ‘always out’. Over a two year period, a number of emerging performance challenges ensued, including increased staff attrition and difficulty with attraction, all despite a continued trend of positive engagement results.

Without a clear understanding of what was driving these attraction and retention challenges in the ‘post pandemic’ corporate landscape, our client engaged Spring Point to assess, review, recut, and re-establish a compelling Employee Value Proposition that would help them stand-out, and build and retain a high performing team into the future.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point is currently supporting our client through a program of work that not only explores traditional EVP factors, but also considers broader organisational performance conditions that we know are critical to the effectiveness of the work environment. These broader factors, whilst highly relevant to the employee experience, very often go unexplored in typical EVP and engagement work where priority is shown towards individual, rather than organisational factors. Some of which include:

Congruence between our work and decisions, and our purpose
Connectivity of work to achieving our strategy
Clarity of, and commitment to work priorities (i.e. we know what our priorities are and we commit to them)
Capacity to have ownership of and/or input into the way work is done (are decisions and work done at the right level)
Ease and effectiveness of collaboration across the organisation
Effectiveness of teaming as a way of doing great work
Speed and effectiveness of decision making

Leveraging the Spring Point EVP Framework (below), which we use to fully understand and scope all elements of the employee value proposition, and complemented by our PerformX Diagnostic which captures the work practices that contribute to employee experience and organisational effectiveness, our approach casts a wide net, capturing the full spectrum of relevant EVP components and ensuring the right aspects are in focus.

From the assessment phase we were then able to move confidently into the design phase of the process, culminating in an Accelerated Solution Design workshop, which will inform critical capability, leadership, culture and communication initiatives to drive a compelling EVP, and enable our client to gain competitive advantage in the hard-fought talent market, as well as retain their high performing team over time.

Get in touch if you'd like to chat more about your EVP.

IGNORE, RESTORE OR EVOLVE? THE NEW WORKPLACE DILEMMA

dylan.flavell@springpoint.com.au (Dylan Flavell) — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 02:59:46 GMT

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ORGANISATIONS TO MAKE SOME CRUCIAL DECISIONS.

Ignore, Restore or Evolve? That appears to be dilemma faced by many organisations trying to navigate critical talent, culture and workforce issues ‘post pandemic’. With the inertia caused by lockdowns and health regulations quickly evaporating over the past few months, it is being replaced by frenetic organisational activity focussed on transforming or getting organisations ‘back on track’.

This reality poses a culture, talent and workforce dilemma for organisations in their response to this rapidly changing context:

Do we Ignore these changes and just retain the default work practices that have set in across the past two years
Do we seek to ‘turn back the clock’ and Restore pre pandemic work patterns and expectations, or;
Do we actively seek to Evolve our culture and ways of working.

Our work across multiple government and large corporates across Australia has seen a range of responses that fall into these 3 categories.

WHERE TO FROM HERE

The opportunity now, regardless of the twists COVID may still present over the coming year, is to make a deliberate effort to explore what ‘Evolve’ might look like for your organisation. Our ‘ Return to the Office Playbook ’ provides insights into how you might start that journey.

Our key reflections from research and our current experience are:

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE VS ENGAGEMENT: TIME FOR A RETHINK

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 04:10:42 GMT

WHY CULTURE, NOT ENGAGEMENT, IS THE NEXT HORIZON FOR BUSINESS EXCELLENCE

The jury is in, and the verdict is clear – Employee Engagement is not the wonder metric we hoped it was. In fact, market leading organisations have discovered that much more emphasis on culture is needed to drive the performance outcomes required to execute strategy AND to generate sustainable employee engagement. Many organisations grapple with the decision of focusing on either culture or employee engagement, and whilst these measures are often spoken about interchangeably, their differences are critical.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

At its simplest, culture measures how an organisation works , whilst engagement measures how employees feel about an organisation . Culture describes the priorities, behaviours and collective work practices used to get work done, and is a strong predictor of organisational performance and individual performance. Employee engagement measures personal reactions and experiences of the workplace and is a useful predictor of individual performance.

Despite these critical differences, it is common practice for boards and executive teams to use engagement as a proxy for culture and in doing so, fail to gather critical data on the workings and health of their organisation.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT?

Years of organisational data, as well as some high profile organisational failures, have brought to attention some critical challenges with employee engagement. At the top of this list is the recognition that it is entirely possible for employees to feel content and ‘engaged’, even if they are working within an environment that has critical weaknesses in work practices and behaviours. Using engagement as a measure of organisational health can, paradoxically serve to ‘dial up’ behaviours that are counterproductive to organisational health and performance.

The confusion between engagement and culture was highlighted through the Royal Commission into the Financial Services Industry in Australia, where high engagement was common in organisations of focus, despite the prevalence of significant cultural issues.

Siloed work practices, information not being shared freely within and across the organisation, and a skewed focus on organisational and individual performance over customer experience were common cultural findings. The Royal Commission made it apparent that whilst employee engagement was often healthy, the operations of the organisation were unhealthy and unsustainable in an increasingly competitive market where customer experience and trust matter. This is a powerful example of mistaken identity; where employee engagement is considered a proxy measure for culture and organisational health.

FROM DATA TO ACTION

When we look to pivot from data to action, another key difference between engagement and culture diagnostic data is apparent. Because engagement measures how people feel, acting on this data in a way that addresses root causes is not easy or intuitive. The engagement question ‘I enjoy coming to work every day’ requires much more exploration (or lucky guesswork!) from a busy manager to effectively address that data point. Quality culture measurement, on the other hand, measures the behaviours known to support organisational and individual performance. ‘Authority is appropriately delegated so that people can act on their own’ provides reasonable clarity about where effort needs to be directed to enable change.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Leading organisations with whom we partner have recognised this tipping point and that a focus on culture is better able to develop organisational health, predict organisational outcomes and drive critical decision making. Simply put, a culture assessment cuts to the core of your business, highlighting the root causes of challenges and opportunities, whilst engagement is just on outcome of that culture. If you shift culture, you shift everything, including engagement.

The decision to measure either culture or engagement should be an easy one; both are important but they are not the same in what they measure or what they predict. Importantly though, where boards, executive teams and leaders are concerned about having the data necessary to inform sustainable organisational performance and health, measuring culture is critical.

Find out more about how you can measure organisational culture .

Organisational Culture and Employee Engagement: What’s the relationship? Kotrba, 2016

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE: THE STRATEGIC LIABILITY OF OUR TIME

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 04:36:16 GMT

Seven principles for increasing your chances of effective culture change.

(Training & Development Feb 2017; Bersin. J., 2006).

For many organisations today, culture has become a liability. Although culture is essential for organisational performance and health, a pervasive inability to understand and manage culture in support of business performance has become a significant strategic risk. Indeed, recent research finds that 46 percent of financial services senior leaders rank ineffective culture and behaviour change as the most critical barrier to pursuing their digital strategies (1). And these leaders are right to be worried, with 70% of all transformation failures linked to culture-related issues (2).

As business strategies evolve to meet the challenge of disruption, the importance of culture has escalated. Employees are being asked to radically rethink what success looks like and to adopt very different collective behaviours and mindsets in support of this new definition of success. It is in this context that the power of culture becomes clear: it is culture that ultimately says 'yes' or 'no' to strategic success, because culture dictates what employees will and won't do, how they do it, and their openness to change.

Understandably, this has led many to seek to meticulously investigate and describe their existing and aspired cultures - what they are, and how they feel. This approach has led to a multitude of well-intentioned but failed investments: from detailed culture narratives that never make it out of the executive suite, to wonderfully described yet meaningless values, and ambitious large-scale agile transformations that seem to create new ways for people to do, or not do, the same things. Indeed, research shows investment in 'culture change programs' has not been particularly effective, with such programs well represented in the approximately 70% of organisational change initiatives that fail to achieve meaningful impact (3).

While the picture for culture change appears challenged, research and practice offer a different perspective, showing the key principles for culture change that have been demonstrated in research and practice to dramatically increase the chance of culture change success (4)(5)(6).

They are:

Connect your culture to strategy: Ultimately the power of culture is not in its uniqueness or face-value desirability, but its ability to align employee mindsets, behaviours and practices to deliver on strategy. It is not what the culture is, but what it does for organisations that is important.
Measure what matters: Leverage models and tools that enable measurement of culture in relation to well evidenced areas of work practice and behaviour that support organisational performance. Don’t spend time developing unique frameworks that lack an empirical basis. The Denison Organisational Culture is the model we advocate for. It is practical, based on organisational science and practice and is easily understood
Pay attention to competing demands: All organisations have competing priorities, for example, many find a conflict between behaviours that prioritise investment in people, and behaviours that emphasise performance in a competitive business environment. Supporting employees to develop the skills and awareness to balance these tensions is at the heart of adaptable organisations and sustainable performance
Turn data into action (and do it quickly): Don't focus on obtaining the perfect interpretation of your data before moving to action. Search your data for key actions and behaviours that can prompt change. Using a diagnostic that links culture to specific work practices that support organisational performance can help you move quickly to action.
Involve people and teams in planning and ideation: Many leaders are hesitant to let employees get involved in shaping the aspired ‘perfect’ culture. Yet humans are wired to resist change imposed upon them, so give your people and teams meaningful opportunities to contribute.
Don’t go 'big' with change actions: prioritise habit shifts that will make the biggest difference and connect them to core business practices: Strong cultures are resistant to invasive attempts to change them. Focus instead on the new habits and small changes to work practices that will have cultural ripple effects. These are usually small changes to behaviours, practices and reinforcement mechanisms that influence critical behaviours (e.g. communication, collaboration, decision making).
Monitor the change process, don't just measure its effects: Identify the lead and lag indicators of successful culture change in your organisation and pulse them regularly. This will allow you to track culture shifts as they happen, iterate and pivot and generate change momentum.

These 7 principles are good news for organisations. Culture can be a powerful force for competitive advantage when managed well. The opportunity of the moment is to start applying well-evidenced principles for culture development and bring your strategically aligned culture to life – before it becomes a liability.

If you want to read more about organisational culture, check out our Revolution in Culture Change whitepaper.

Catlin and Goran (2017). Building momentum for cultural change. McKinsey & Company.
Dagan et al. (2019). Back to the not-so-basics of managing change. McKinsey & Company.
Leonard and Coltea (2013). Most change initiatives fail -- But they don't have to. Gallup Business Journal.
Keller and Schaninger (2019). Beyond Performance 2.0. John Wiley & Sons Inc , NY: New York.
Denison and Nieminen (2014). Habits as change levers. People & Strategy, 37(1), p23
Ulrich et al. (2017). Leaders as paradox navigators. Leader to Leader, 86, p 53-59.

CODE OF CONDUCT WITH A DIFFERENCE

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 23:00:02 GMT

Industry: Finance

Service area: Culture

OPPORTUNITY

With a newly appointed CEO and the financial services context heavily shaped by the recent Hayne Royal Commission, NAB sought a partner to help roll out their Code of Conduct, purpose and values to their 40,000 global employees. Practicality, relevance, a focus on good decision making and behaviour change science were central to the success of this work.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point supported a core project team to develop two key artefacts to support enterprise-wide rollout of the Purpose, Values and Code of Conduct. These included:

Development of an organisation wide approach to rolling out the new and refreshed Code of Conduct, Purpose and Values that was leader led and made relevant to all team members
Development of a 3-minute digital animation, to launch the campaign and to spearhead regular campaign reactivation. The purpose of the animation was to introduce the new code of conduct and related tools in a way that was practical and accessible to all employees, while leveraging key cognitive psychology principles to support better human decision making

CONNECTING PEOPLE THROUGH SERVICE

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 23:00:02 GMT

Industry: Education

Service area: Capability

OPPORTUNITY

As part of a major digital transformation, RMIT sought support in preparing their support functions (IT, HR, Finance, Procurement) across Australia and Vietnam to work in fundamentally different, and technology enabled ways.

WHAT WE DID

We developed an evidence-based, blended learning solution to provide employees with not only the training they required, but also support across the transformation and change process. As part of the program, we also developed a Service Experience Framework to drive a consistent and world-class service culture.

We conducted pre- and post-training assessments to measure behaviour change and training effectiveness. A training evaluation survey and feedback session was also delivered to assess participant satisfaction and opportunities for improvement.

OUTCOME

The Service connect training was rolled out across Australia and Vietnam. The program received excellent feedback from participants and stakeholders. It achieved a Diamond Award in the 2021 LearnX awards and was a finalist in the AITD Excellence Awards.

ADVANCING HUMAN RESOURCES FOR FUNCTIONAL EXCELLENCE

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 03:21:46 GMT

Industry: Education

Service area: Transformation

OPPORTUNITY

With a new strategy ‘Advancing Melbourne 2030’, the HR function at Melbourne University sought a partner to support them in reviewing the strategic needs and readiness of the HR Division. Specifically, the work sought to advise on the most appropriate operating model, strategic objectives, capability and key processes to enable functional excellence into the future.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point conducted a functional review of the strategy and people function that included:

Stakeholder interviews across the University
A functional effectiveness diagnostic
Process and service effectiveness review
Broader university operating model definition
HR capability assessment
Process mapping and definition

OUTCOME

The work delivered the following key outcomes that were the catalyst for immediate changes:

Revised HR Operating Model and related HR structure
Future capabilities for success defined and current function benchmarked against these
Development of change roadmap to support the implementation of key processes, services and operating model recommendations

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM SPRING POINT

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 01:40:59 GMT

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT IN 2021

As we close off another extraordinary year, it has become even clearer that nothing is more important than human to human connection. We are extremely grateful to have shared this past year with our wonderful network and our resilient and innovative clients. Working with you on projects that create real impact is one of the things that has helped us through this year.

We have created a Yearbook that captures the ambition, passion and resilience of our clients, reflected through a selection of 12 projects completed over the past 12 months. Whilst challenging, the current business context continues to stretch our collective thinking about what is needed to build sustainable, high performing and future ready organisations.

While our Yearbook showcases a small selection of client partnerships and work we are proud of, we acknowledge all of our wonderful clients with whom we’ve worked this year, and who have supported us over the last 12 months. We are beyond excited to share the Yearbook with you.

The Spring Point team wishes all our clients, suppliers, associates and network a safe and happy holiday period and we look forward to many more encounters next year.

Wednesday 22nd December will be our last day for the year, and we will re-open on Monday 10th January. However, please feel free to contact us via email during that time and we will be happy to climb out of the pool and respond.

LEADERSHIP ESSENTIALS TO ELEVATE PRODUCTIVITY

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 05:13:05 GMT

Industry: Agriculture

Service area: Leadership

OPPORTUNITY

Emmetts is a leading solution provider for Australian farming industry and has a proud history and heritage. Through a commitment to growth and success through its people, Emmetts identified the need to build specific managerial and leadership skills across high potential talent to help elevate productivity and adaptability.

WHAT WE DID

We designed and delivered a targeted program on the topics of leading self, leading others, and leading the business. This included:

Assessment
E-Learning primers
Virtual workshops
Individual learning application activities
Group coaching

OUTCOME

The successful delivery of the program garnered positive feedback from participants, helped establish shared language on effective leadership and management practices across the emerging leader cohort, and embedded core skills that will continue to enable the strategic direction at Emmetts.

ALIGNED VALUES AND LEADERSHIP

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 03:11:16 GMT

Industry: Packaging

Service area: Leadership

OPPORTUNITY

The coming together of two of Australia’s leading sustainable manufacturing companies saw the emergence of our client, Opal. With a new journey ahead, our client had a clear intent to align the workforce on the key behaviours and values that drive great performance and leadership. To support this journey, a need was identified to define what ‘good looks like’ from a Values and Leadership perspective, to help steer key activities across the employee lifecycle.

WHAT WE DID

Following our partnership to co-create Opal’s Values, we co-designed Opal’s Leadership Competency Framework. Through deep consultation with key senior stakeholders, data gathering workshops, and leveraging over a decade of IP, we defined the 10 key leadership capabilities that were essential for great leadership at Opal.

Each capability was brought to life through 4 behavioural proof points, and expanded across 3 levels of proficiency:

Frontline Leadership,
Mid-Level Leadership, and
Executive / Strategic Leadership.

OUTCOME

Opal’s Leadership Capability Framework was successfully delivered, supported by an enabling Toolkit, to help create alignment across the organisation, through leadership practices, development, recruitment, selection and performance management activities.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOR TRUE TRANSFORMATION

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:40:04 GMT

Industry: Insurance and Business Services

Service area: Transformation

BUSINESS NEED

A dynamic and changing external environment, a new technology initiative, and a commitment to enhancing the customer experience were at the centre of the change agenda for Sedgwick. Culminating in an operating model refresh, process simplification and technological uplift, Spring Point were engaged to support the change management process by assessing, planning, and implementing a broad range of activities to enable the transformation.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point utilised a multi-method approach to assist the change management process, including:

Generating data driven insights to inform the change plan, including a change readiness and needs assessment, and stakeholder mapping;
Ongoing change management support across a 6 month period to define and structure key activities;
Communications planning, design and asset creation to inform and engage the workforce across the duration of the program;
Coaching and advisory support for senior leaders throughout the transformation process;
Design and facilitation of a blended change leadership program to assist leaders in navigating the transformation, including: self assessments, learning transfer activities and immersive workshops.

OUTCOME

The program enabled Sedgwick to make a successful transition to a new operating model, and increased change capability across leadership roles, all while maintaining organisational values at the forefront.

BUILDING BUSINESS PARTNERING CAPABILITY

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:40:01 GMT

Industry: Healthcare

Service area: Capability

In the context of an increasingly competitive health insurance industry and a new, dynamic strategy to execute, Bupa engaged Spring Point to design and deliver a bold capability program to build the skills required for the journey ahead. With a clear focus on enhancing business partnering and consulting skills for critical roles in the business, Spring Point created a blended learning solution for core functional teams, enhancing their ability to create value for the organisation.

BUSINESS NEED

To equip the Finance, Technology and People Teams with the knowledge and skills to become trusted advisors and impactful partners for the business. Due to the disruption of COVID-19 and new working from home requirements, Spring Point rapidly adapted the program to be delivered virtually, and reshaped the learner journey to be more flexible and scalable.

WHAT WE DID

Developed a blended learning solution, designing and delivering the following features:

Activation Sessions to create a baseline for the development experience;
180-degree surveys and reports, including a group debrief and group coaching to embed learning and development;
Immersive, virtual workshops, covering the following topics: trusted advisor, strengths-based working, consulting skills, stakeholder engagement, strategic thinking, difficult and meaningful conversations, resilience and continuous improvement;
Curated content to prime participants, Learning Transfer Activities to apply skills, and on the job tools to refresh on key models and concepts;
Created toolkits and briefing sessions to equip Leaders to support the development journey.

OUTCOME

The program has continued to expand over the past 2 years to additional cohorts, with increases in self reported capability uplift and NPS from participants.

THE PEOPLE LEADER CODE

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:39:58 GMT

Industry: Technology

Service area: Leadership

OPPORTUNITY

Leidos recognised that the people leadership is a cornerstone of a great organisation, while also being key to growth and delivering on customer promises. To improve talent attraction, retention, engagement and performance, Leidos set out to achieve their goal of becoming a great place to work.

WHAT WE DID

A nine month People Leader Code leadership program was designed around 10 critical conversations that leaders need to have with their people.

These were arranged into 4 modules using a range of blended learning methods, including:

launch video to energise participants to the program
pre/post program 270 degree assessments
custom e-learning
immersive face to face workshops
on the job learning tools
on-the-job learning transfer activities
curated extension activities and content
group and peer coaching
practical tools and resources to support performance
graduation activities that helped embed practices and build networks

Excitement and anticipation was created through involving a reference group, who were both advisors and advocates for the program among their peers. A launch for the executive team created visibility and clearly outlined the role of leaders' leaders, in promoting learning and practically supporting the program.

OUTCOME

The program garnered participant and stakeholder feedback that excelled beyond expectations
The flexible delivery design enabled busy leaders to maintain momentum
From push to pull means plans to extend to matrix leaders
Significant improvement in engagement data attributed to program

Touching every leader in the business, the program has been a huge success with one participant going as far as remarking “ it feels like the culture is changing every day ”.

SUSTAINABLE CULTURE FOR SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:39:56 GMT

Industry: Architecture

Service area: Culture

BUSINESS NEED

With a clear and compelling vision to lead the way for sustainable architecture in Australia, Breathe Architecture aspired to create a culture that strongly aligned to the vision and values of the business. Spring Point was engaged to better understand the current state of culture state and how to shape it in a way that enabled the organisational direction.

WHAT WE DID

We deployed a culture assessment and planning program, including the following key features:

Deployment of the Spring Point PerformX Culture assessment, utilising both quantitative and qualitative data
Data synthesis and analysis
Detailed and summary culture insights reporting
Leadership team engagement and workshops to identify priority areas of focus and culture intervention planning

OUTCOMES

The review led to key organisational improvement initiatives, including communication channel improvements, decision making transparency, enhanced position descriptions and strategic clarity and alignment across the workforce.

Spring Point continues to partner with Breathe Architecture in cyclical culture assessment and planning programs, and this has resulted in improvement across all culture factors between the 2020 and 2021 review periods.

CREATING AN EXCEPTIONAL MEMBER EXPERIENCE

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 03:19:33 GMT

Industry: Financial Services

Service area: Culture

BUSINESS NEED

CPA Australia has more than 168,000 members in over 100 countries and is one of the world’s largest accounting bodies. With a strategy centred on delivering an exceptional member experience, CPA Australia recognised the need to develop a culture that supported the delivery of this strategy.

WHAT WE DID

We deployed the Denison Culture Diagnostic to generate quantitative and qualitative insights from the entire workforce;
We developed a culture blueprint and roadmap with the CPA Executive team to define the culture strategy needed to ensure workforce alignment to the strategic ambitions of CPA Australia;
We supported CPA Australia to develop and embed a data to action process to ensure diagnostics led to practical action;
Over the past 3 years we have continued to work with the Executive team and Board to reassess the culture and to revisit and monitor progress on and against CPA Australia’s culture blueprint.

OUTCOMES

Designed and supported a process that engaged all Board members and employees in culture assessment and action planning over a 3-year period;
Created and sustained the visibility and utility of a culture blueprint that overtly connects strategy and culture, that is the foundation of CPA Australia’s workforce strategy and priorities and is regularly monitored by the board;
Achieved significant and sustained increases in performance culture scores over 3 years.

ADJUSTING FOR THE TIMES

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 01:12:02 GMT

Industry: Financial services

Service area: Capbility Development

When COVID-19 restrictions on group gatherings were introduced, our client could no longer run their face to face induction program. However, they were still hiring new staff, and needed to onboard these new team members.

A rapid redesign to a blended, digital program was required, to align with social and corporate restrictions.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Onboarding is a critical opportunity to build new hire engagement. While the program was to be delivered digitally, it needed to be easy to follow, interactive and engaging, with opportunity for new hires to come together and get to know others within the organisation.

Additionally, our client, a not-for-profit superanuation fund, is a strongly values driven organisation. Their values, specifically their focus on ‘members first’, needed to shine through in the program.

Working in partnership with our client’s Learning & Development team, we mapped a blended program to be delivered across four modules. Each module followed a consistent rhythm of:

Learning primers (elearning, animated videos, curated content): Delivered key content in an interactive, engaging way.
Virtual immersive workshop: Provided opportunity for new hires to explore key content in further depth, and to come together and meet others within the organisation (including senior leaders).
Learning transfer activities (activities, reflective questions): Reinforced learning and encouraged practical application.

A streamlined design and development process allowed us to build and deploy content rapidly, with the program piloted 6 weeks after the project commenced.

WHAT WE DID

Needs Analysis
Learning Program Design
eLearning & Digital Collateral
Video Production
Graphic Design

CALLOUT

Focus On Engagement

As one of the first experiences within a new organisation, orientation is a critical opportunity to win the hearts and minds of new hires. The program was designed to be interactive and engaging, with opportunity to build connection with others and a focus on our client’s ‘members first’ philosophy.

Rapid Development

By comprehensively mapping content and streamlining the development process, we were able to build and deploy content rapidly, with the program piloted 6 weeks after the project commenced.

KEY OUTCOMES

Complies with COVID-19 social and corporate restrictions
Ability to orient new hires in different locations within the same program
On-demand resources allow new hires to access onboarding content straight away
Reduced travel costs

ALIGNING STRATEGY & EXECUTION AT SUPERFRIEND

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 06:49:30 GMT

Industry: Not for profit

Service area: Culture

Our client advocates for, equips and empowers profit-to-member superannuation funds and insurers to achieve mentally healthy workplaces for their staff and members.

Their vision, pure and simply, is an Australia where all workplaces are mentally healthy.

Having recently revised their business strategy, our client (a not-for-profit organisation working with mental health) now sought to align their culture and ways of working to support delivery of strategic objectives.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

With an ambitious strategy to deliver workplace mental health solutions of increased scale and impact, this not-for-profit understood the need quickly align their culture and ways of working to support their new direction. Our client was already in the midst of significant structural changes in line with their new approach, and it was therefore important to not only support employees to come to terms with necessary changes, but to galvanise them around a new culture that would support achievement of their purpose.

We created and facilitated an energetic, highly immersive strategy and culture off-site for the entire team, anchoring our work to our client’s purpose and values. We introduced a model of high-performance culture, supporting the team to identify and work through points of tension and clearly articulate the cultural trade-offs necessary to deliver their strategy. Other workshop feature components included a culture ‘current state’ review; a Customer Panel Discussion to build shared understanding and alignment between strategic objectives and customer needs; and action-planning to identify essential changes to ways of working needed to achieve the new culture.

To support activation of the new strategy and ways of working, we regrouped with the executive and senior leadership team to design and deliver a peer coaching masterclass at their leadership offsite. The session was focussed on building skills for having necessary leadership conversations, and establishing collective habits for accelerating team performance and success.

WHAT WE DID

Culture Diagnosis
Workshop Design
Facilitation
Customer Panel Interviewing
Senior Stakeholder Engagement

CALLOUT

Culture Expertise

Our deep understanding of organisational culture enabled us to provide clarity on the tensions and trade-offs required to define a high performing culture, and to identify evidence-based points of alignment to strategic outcomes.

Change Management

We leveraged our experience in not only defining but creating high performance culture to identify key organisational levers for culture change and define a pragmatic approach to implementation. We also supported employees to come on a journey of change acceptance and to feel empowered to create meaningful change in their organisation.

Facilitation Capability

Our facilitation capability enabled the open and challenging discussions and decisions necessary to create genuine alignment and shared vision for cultural change.

KEY OUTCOMES

Through carefully facilitated discussion and action, our client was able to cultivate a shared understanding of the culture they needed to support their strategy, and the steps necessary to achieve this.

Outcomes of the day were captured in an insights and action pack, enabling the team to move quickly to implementation.

Peer coaching was identified as a critical competency, and developed via a masterclass which enhanced individual skills and collective leadership habits.

CONTINUOUS CONVERSATIONS FRAMEWORK

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:33:13 GMT

Industry: Information Technology

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

The organisation is made up of several acquired businesses as well as the parent company and was embarking on a strategy to ignite the potential of their internal expertise to maximise their reach of the recruitment market. They realised their need to clarify expectations and drive performance in a way that recognised that they had people with good qualities who had developed poor habits over time. They therefore wanted an enabling process that focused on the conversations around performance rather than simply an annual ‘check the box’ process that appeared punitive.

WHAT WE DID

We developed a Continuous Conversations Framework that was simple and user-friendly in order to be applicable at all levels of the organisation. To facilitate conversations about performance and requirements in a respectful and productive way we further developed the following set of tools and resources:

A ‘Smart Conversations’ Calendar including a range of mandatory and non-mandatory conversations that focus attention on performance goals, actions and results in a way that is engaging and motivational.
Capability Framework – a suite of 12 capabilities used to identify and develop the current and future skills, attributes and behaviours that are most critical to success across the organisation.
Conversation Planner Templates providing questions and conversation starters that enable some structure and consistency for each conversation as well as clarity for both managers and team members on the expected outcomes and flow for the conversation.
Skill Building Workshops for managers and team members to communicate the new process and tools for the Continuous Conversations Framework and develop the skills required to maximise the value of the tools e.g. giving and receiving feedback, the role and importance of trust, planning conversations and managing difficult conversations effectively.

OUTCOME

Clarius used the tools we designed and developed to create an internal Continuous Conversations Framework (CCF) online system, enabling easy access and use for managers and team members. The capability uplift sessions were delivered once the system had been built and just prior to the Performance Objectives and Development Planning sessions. Feedback from both managers and team members was positive and people felt excited and prepared to begin having ‘continuous conversations’.

BRINGING THE CITY OF GEELONG'S VALUES TO LIFE

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:46:05 GMT

Industry: Government

Service area: Culture

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

City of Greater Geelong had experienced a significant amount of change. As the organisation undertook a key activity to refresh their values they sought a partner to support them to work with a broad range of leaders and stakeholder to define what these ‘values in action’ looked like and to advise and support the embedding of values through the development of a ‘Valves Toolkit’, a core aspect of a leader led values development program across the organisation

WHAT WE DID

Developed a process to support senior leader and front-line engagement in values definition
Facilitated a series of ‘Values @ CoGG’ workshops to define the values as discrete ‘On Track / Off Track’ behavioural markers
Developed a leader led process and supporting toolkit to enable all people leaders at CoGG to have values centred conversation with their teams over a 12-month period to support improved visibility and aligned to ‘Values In Action

LINKING CULTURE & PERFORMANCE AT MYER

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:39:25 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Culture

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

Against the backdrop of a highly competitive and disrupted market, this retailer was in the early stages of implementing an exciting new customer and execution focused strategy. Recognising the need to shape organisational culture such that it supports and enables strategy implementation, they sought out a systemic performance culture model and related diagnostics to provide a baseline measure and facilitate leader alignment.

WHAT WE DID

Implemented the Denison Organisational Culture Survey to 3000 team members (a sample of 25% of the workforce). A response rate of 90% was achieved, well above all industry benchmarks.
Supported the HR and Executive team to explore the data from multiple perspectives
Conducted briefings with the HR and Executive teams accompanied by an Insights Report that summarised themes from the overall data and observations from the results in depth.
1:1 interviews were facilitated with each Executive to gain an understanding of the broader business context impacting the results, key challenges, opportunities for improvement and what their own functional results meant.
The work culminated in a Data to Action workshop with the Executive team, focused on identifying and agreeing on key initiatives that would build on the good work already underway.
A range of different tools were used throughout the engagement process to generate deeper levels of insight and ideas, including: card sort activity, cultural transformation case studies, Initiative cards and mapping of deep cultural assumptions.

OUTCOME

Through our work with the HR and Executive teams, Myer had baseline culture data to drive action and monitor progress. The work sparked conversations about the good work already underway, and the opportunities in front of them. The Executive were able to agree on strategic priorities and communicate and engage the rest of the organisation in the results and outcomes from the process.

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AT MYER

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 03:47:31 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

Myer is an iconic Australian department store with a proud performance history. Digital disruption and changing consumer behaviour were at the heart of the Executive seeking to: Assess and understand their culture, create a culture blueprint, articulating the aspired culture relative to their customer centred strategy, and develop targeted initiatives to accelerate performance and behaviour change

WHAT WE DID

We partnered with the Head of Culture and the Executive team to deploy a systemic and performance focussed organisational culture diagnostic. We used the Denison Organisational Culture framework on this occasion, deploying it to 4000 staff. We then supported the organisation to mine insights and develop a Culture Blueprint defining the aspired culture based on current and future business performance needs. We the supported the executive to develop a roadmap of critical culture investment priorities.

THEN WHERE TO?

Our partnership didn’t stop there. We continued to work with Myer to develop a leadership framework and learning curriculum centred on developing customer experience, leadership and management capability. Specifically, these included:

Immersive workshop design co-facilitated by senior leaders
20 mobile responsive, bite-sized online ‘Learning Moments’ (eLearning)
Leader’s Find Portal
Quick reference guides and team activities

AGILE ACADEMY AT 7-ELEVEN

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 03:39:25 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

7 Eleven has a proud history as an iconic global retailer with the goal of reaching a billion customer moments by 2030.

An underpinning assumption behind the organisation’s strategy and mission is the acknowledgement that the organisation, teams and people need to fundamentally change the way they work to enable customer centricity fuelled by innovation, speed and sustainability. To support this, 7 Eleven made the decision to adopt an agile operating model, behaviours and ways of working; scaled out broadly across the business.

HOW WE HELPED

To enable this 7-Eleven sought our support to build a digital induction program that achieved the following:

Upskill new starters on the Agile operating model and related ways of working
Accommodate varied learner needs, recognising some team members will require depth in Agile, whilst others won't
Engage learners at a critical point of their experience with 7-Eleven, but does so without an intact ‘cohort’, requiring a digitally powered and self paced solution
Achieve rapid knowledge uptake and skill acquisition that quickly develops confidence and comfort in new starters

We set about rapidly developing and deploying an impactful behaviour change solution focused on truly enabling agile at scale at 7-Eleven.

We partnered with 7-Eleven to develop their Agile Learning Academy, a broad capability and behaviour change solution that is targeted at upskilling people and teams into new ways of working and operating.

The Agile Academy is a learning solution that features:

A learner centred approach that enables tailored learning journeys based on specific role and that recognises existing skill strengths and gaps
A blended solution, that enables learning through digital, social and experiential channels
A solution that prioritises measurement of change to ensure impact and accountability
An experience that is about behavioural change, not training, with on-the-job application being central in ensuring knowledge turns into skill that then crystallises into habit.

REAL IMPACT FOR NEW STARTERS

On average, new starters are accessing the Agile Academy assets approximately 15 times each, a clear indication that the program content is delivering real value through the learning journey design.

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AT AUSTRALIA’S MOST ICONIC DEPARTMENT STORE

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 03:33:42 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Culture

OPPORTUNITY

Myer is an iconic Australian department store with a proud performance history. Digital disruption and changing consumer behaviour were at the heart of the reasons Spring Point was engaged to support the Executive to assess and understand their culture, articulate an aspired culture that would drive their customer centred strategy, and develop targeted initiatives to accelerate performance and behaviour change.

WHAT WE DID

We partnered with the Head of Culture and the Executive team to deploy a systemic and performance focussed organisational culture diagnostic. We used the Denison Organisational Culture framework on this occasion, deploying it to 4000 staff. We then supported the organisation to mine insights and develop a Culture Blueprint defining the aspired culture based on current and future business performance needs. We then supported the executive to develop a roadmap of critical culture investment priorities.

OUTCOMES

Immersive workshop design co-facilitated by senior leaders;
20 mobile responsive, bite-sized online ‘Learning Moments’ (eLearning);
Leader’s Find Portal;
Quick reference guides and team activities .

ENGAGING THE WORKFORCE IN MEANINGFUL ORGANISATIONAL VALUES

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 03:28:39 GMT

Industry: Logistics

Service area: Culture

OPPORTUNITY

Asciano is an Australian freight logistics company committed to making organisational values meaningful and engaging its workforce to understand how these translate into individual and business performance.

WHAT WE DID

Asciano recognised the importance of embedding their values to ensure that they are more than words on paper and instead are hardwired into to the way that employees approach their work. Asciano weaved their values into core organisational processes and practices such as performance appraisals, online induction, enterprise leadership development programs and a recognition program to acknowledge and reward employees who are living the values.

Online training was also developed to ensure that the energy and focus around the organisational Values did not wane and that employees had a clear understanding of:

How we embed our Values in our daily work;
How we incorporate our Values into our daily communication;
How we recognise our Values in “what we do”.

The online training was designed to be accessible to all staff and re-used on an ongoing basis for new starters as part of induction. By the conclusion of the training learners were able to:

Identify the Asciano Values;
Understand how the Values can be illustrated with the “more of, less of” concept;
Encounter some concrete examples of the Values in action in Asciano’s business;
Identify approximately six behaviours or tasks unique to their role, which they can perform to put the values into practice .

GOOD VALUE FOR GOOD WORK

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 02:05:47 GMT

Industry: Microfinance, Not for profit

Service area: Capability

Good Shepherd Microfinance is a world leader in financial inclusion products, services and advisory. We offer fair and affordable financial programs to people on low incomes, and advisory services with a global reach.

They work collaboratively with the corporate, government and community sectors to create people-centred programs that enable clients to realise their own economic wellbeing, as they define it themselves. This approach leaves clients feeling valued and in control of their finances and lives.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Our client was wanting to provide a 6 month learning program called “LaunchME”, initially targeting at risk 18-25 year old carers but with a longer view to extend to other audiences. The program needed to be blended in nature: face to face, virtual coaching and online learning.

They were seeking a partner to work with them on a critical aspect of the program, ‘Personal Finances’. Whilst the client had some face to face training content available, they wanted this used as the basis of a series of elearning modules that could be applied for the benefit of this immediate cohort, and beyond.

WHAT WE DID

Accelerated co-design of Learning Taxonomy and program architecture
Research and provision of missing information
Desktop review and sorting of existing material
Design and build of three elearning modules for ‘Personal Finances’
Rebranded an additional three elearning modules related to the overall program

CALLOUT

Funding challenges

While our client had received some funding and allocated a budget for this work, they do not have the means or budgets of corporate clients. We provided this solution at less than half the normal cost whilst providing the same quality of work that all our clients would expect.

Durability across purposes

While core to LaunchME, our client wanted this online content to be able to be repurposed. Our client was targeting a specific learning demographic. The learning needed to be cognisant of their learning preferences but also work for other possible audiences.

Demonstrates impact

Measuring completion, knowledge acquisition and ultimately impact were important to demonstrate value to funders.

Appropriate for aggregation

The client wanted to use a range of sources to curate content for their audience. Designing with this in mind was important.

Award winning

While not the primary intent of this work, any profile that celebrates the wonderfully valuable work of Good Shepherd Microfinance and promotes positive storytelling and action for those financially excluded, would be a valuable outcome.

KEY OUTCOMES

Co-design of the learning taxonomy meant that our consultants developed a deeper understanding of the organisation and its goals as well as our client building skills and knowledge of designing learning architectures.

Our previous experience building elearning modules for a broad range of clients and industries, meant that we could utilise related modules to fill gaps in our client’s overall program.

The modules we provided for this program, can be utilised for other audiences and programs as required.

Our client received exceptional value for money, so they could afford to use a high quality, evidence-based solution within their budget

PLACING THE COMMUNITY FIRST IN EVERY WAY

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 04:13:54 GMT

Industry: Government

Service area: Transformation

OPPORTUNITY

With a bold transformation strategy that sought to place the ‘Community First’ in every way, City of Port Phillip sought a partner to help them develop and facilitate a methodology to optimise their operating model and critical programs of work. In focus for this review were the development of an Enterprise Project Management Office, an enhanced focus on ‘Property and Assets’ and ‘Great Places and Precincts’ portfolios, and a continued uplift of Customer Service.

WHAT WE DID

Development of a methodology to engage broad cross functional stakeholders in defining critical problems that were relevant to performance uplift;
Facilitation of systemic but accelerated ‘Deep Dives’ to support broad data gathering with stakeholders to understand current challenges and opportunities;
Development of agile project disciplines and rhythms to enable short and mid term action plan development;
Identification of systemic capability, change leadership and org design challenges relevant to enable effective change.

The work was the initiation of an 18 month partnership that included early advisory support and then transitioned to implementation support that focussed on enablement of internal teams to lead the work.

SUPPORTING THOSE WHO SUPPORT OTHERS

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 04:00:37 GMT

Industry: Non-profit

Service area: Transformation

OPPORTUNITY

As a provider of critical services to a broad range of individuals and groups who have become isolated and disengaged from the community, Reclink was experiencing funding challenges and leadership instability that were threatening its viability. These challenges required a deliberate approach to stabilising and rebuilding the organisation to ensure its survival.

WHAT WE DID

Spring Point consultants supported Reclink’s Board to undertake a whole of organisation review to enable a refreshed strategy and to revitalise the operating model. We consulted with internal leaders, the board, external partners and clients to build a picture of current and future state needs.

The data from this broad diagnostic was fed into a series of Board workshops facilitated by Dylan Flavell, to support the generation of a new strategic plan and direction for the organisation. A range of tools were used during this process to conduct the review (Spring Point’s Systemic Review Methodology), to support the Board and CEO to redefine the purpose, mission and vision of the organisation (see example of graphic recording output), to identify strengths and weaknesses in the business model (Business Model Canvas), and to assess the current effectiveness of the Reclink Board (the Australian Institute of Company Directors 10 Principles that Promote Good NFP Governance).

OUTCOME

This work became the backbone of Reclink’s existing strategic plan which has been key in delivering in excess of 100% revenue growth in the following 12 months.

Spring Point continued to support Reclink’s Board and CEO and completed a 12 month ‘strategy plan check in’ to monitor progress to plan.

MAXIMISING STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE IN A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 03:47:26 GMT

Industry: Education

Service area: Transformation

OPPORTUNITY

We partnered with Swinburne University – in particular, the STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Faculty – to conduct a large-scale review of key functions across the Faculty. The review focused on ensuring they were equipped and aligned to activate a new strategy and become leaders in both the rapidly changing higher education sector, and the broader community. We initiated a comprehensive review of 6 key functions: People, Engagement, Teaching, Research, Infrastructure and Market.

Via deep engagement across the Faculty, we generated insights from both internal and external stakeholders to paint a vivid picture of current performance and future opportunities.

This work culminated in the creation of tactical plans for each function, illustrating detailed priority initiatives to empower the Faculty to achieve their ambitious business strategy.

WHAT WE DID

Conducted employee surveys and focus groups
Executive engagement
Workshop facilitation
Insights reporting & external industry trends scan
Tactical planning & roadmap development
Deep stakeholder and external partner engagement

TAKING TO THE SKIES FOR FUNCTIONAL EFFICIENCY

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 02:17:52 GMT

Industry: Aviation

Service area: Transformation

CHALLENGE

The RFDS WA operates an iconic, service orientated organisation and does so against the context of constrained budgets, high service demand, and a complex regulatory environment. The RFDS were seeking to restructure their Aviation Division in order to identify operational efficiencies and to prepare the organisation for future growth and strategic redirection. Against the backdrop of a change in organisational leadership, the organisation was seeking a trusted, independent partner to review the structure, capability and culture of the Aviation Division as they prepared for the future.

WHAT WE DID

We facilitated a review that centered on engaging the leadership team to develop an efficient Aviation Division structure that eliminated role clarity issues impacting accountability, and that hard baked regulatory requirements into roles, teams and functions. Leadership, capability and process improvements were front of mind and part of the key recommendations to emerge from this review. Key phases of work included design of a tailored evaluative framework and structural design principles, leadership team consultation, and the exploration of multiple structural options. This work then proceeded to detailed role design, and the development of a set of priority recommendations across capability, leadership, process and governance domains.

OUTCOME

The immediate outcomes include role changes across 3 levels of the structure, the implementation of a capability and team effectiveness programs of work. Implementation of transformational programs of work proposed by this review are scheduled for phase 2 activation.

VALUES RESET AT ESS SUPER

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 04:52:40 GMT

Industry: Financial Services

Service area: Culture

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

Against the backdrop of a highly competitive superannuation industry characterised by ongoing consolidation and cost pressure, this superannuation fund was focused on becoming ‘future ready’ and being prepared for significant change.

With operating conditions expected to become more challenging and potentially constrain the organisation’s future goals, this superannuation fund had commenced a number of change-readying activities including a review of its operating model and technology platforms. To support and reinforce these activities, the organisation sought a visible and impactful people intervention to kick start necessary conversations regarding its aspired culture. Specifically, this organisation sought to engage employees in resetting expectations around the organisation’s values and to involve senior leaders in identifying the leadership behaviours that would either reinforce or undermine these.

WHAT WE DID

We designed and facilitated a series of interactive employee workshops to explore the role of values in organisational behaviour and decision-making and whether the current values were suitably future-focused. Through a hands on ‘card sort’ activity participants collaboratively arrived at a set of values for the organisation to ‘let go’ versus values that must be ‘preserved and protected’ and those that must be ‘developed new’ to support future success. Participants then took part in a ‘tagline competition’ to generate descriptions of the values in language that resonated and was meaningful to them.

Consolidated output from these workshops was validated at a subsequent senior manager offsite that we also designed and facilitated. In this session senior managers worked together to explore what the validated set of ‘future proofed’ values meant in relation to ‘on track’ and ‘off track’ leadership behaviours. The collation and documentation of these behavioural guideposts was an important precursor to further leadership development work to support bringing the values to life through senior role models.

IMMERSIVE LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:26:14 GMT

Industry: Mining

Service area: Leadership

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

Newcrest are a world leading gold mining company with global operations and a commitment to being a miner of choice that recognises its role in the communities it operates. Given the breadth of operations & increasing competitiveness for talent and high performance within the sector, Newcrest sought to develop a world class leadership program for entry to mid level managers that was designed to meet AQTF standards enabling certification.

WHAT WE DID

We supported Newcrest to design a 10-day immersive experience, spanning 3 months, that brought leaders in from around the world
The focus was on developing self awareness, the capabilities needed to lead people, teams, and change. This was all done within the context of Newcrest's strategy and the performance demands of the mining sector
All design was mapped to meet AQTF requirements to enable participants to be awarded a Diploma of Management upon completion
We also led facilitation across the 2 x 5 day immersives, where the focus was on integrating key content with experiential activities to help participants apply new ideas in a way that led to shifts in their thinking and behaviour
The program included a project that was chosen by the Group Executive and facilitated cross functional teams to come together on real problems facing the business that range from topics related to operational efficiency, right through to social license challenges. Project work and applied coaching (from facilitators) happened both in immersion sessions and in the 8-week gap between immersion experience 1 and 2
Based on the success of the program, we then supported Newcrest to re-design the program to be deployed in Paua New Guinea, where we also led facilitation

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT & TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:20:13 GMT

Industry: Manuafcturing

Service area: Leadership

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

The demerger of Amcor’s Australasian and Packaging Distribution businesses in 2013 along with the challenges of a mature market contributed to a challenging business environment for the Fibre Division of Orora. In the previous two years significant performance improvements had been made, so the decision was made to invest in the Executive team to support their progression from being a good team to being an ‘outperforming’ team.

WHAT WE DID

The work with the Fibre Division Executive team included:

Supporting Executives to generate self awareness of their own leadership capability through assessment
Using the leadership capability assessment data, supporting the generation of individual development plans
Using the leadership capability assessment data to generate commitments to better team effectiveness and performance
Integrating the leadership development and team effectiveness work with the enterprise leadership development program of work underway.

LEADERSHIP ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Two main tools were used to support Executives to generate self awareness of their leadership capability:

The Denison Leadership Development 360 is a developmental tool, measuring a leader's performance on a set of 12 leadership behaviours linked to high performing business cultures. By providing data-based feedback, this tool allowed the Executives to compare their own ratings to those of their team, colleagues and manager and to identify gaps in perceived strengths, weaknesses and capabilities.
The Denison Leadership Potential Report combines data from the Denison Leadership Development 360 and Hogan Assessment Systems to provide a statistically valid prediction of leadership potential, aligned to the 12 leadership behaviours linked to high performing business cultures.

THE OUTCOME

The leadership assessments and skilled debriefs contributed to clarity about individual Executive strengths and development areas as well as agreement on the key themes helping and hindering team effectiveness and performance.

BUILDING CHANGE LEADER CAPABILITY

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:12:09 GMT

Industry: Government

Service area: Leadership

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

An increase in volume and complexity of project initiatives across a highly regarded Victorian Government Agency provided an opportunity to consider how to best lead the change effort. The objectives for this work included:

Adopt an integrated approach to change leadership that is timely, efficient and resourceful.
Instil a holistic approach to the way change leaders are identified, developed and supported.
Enhance our change leadership capability to embed and sustain the change effort across the organisation.
Provide greater clarity regarding accountability and responsibility for change leadership roles.

OUR APPROACH

The first step in our process was to understand existing change leadership accountabilities across the organisation. From there, a Change Leadership Framework was developed; an integrated approach to the identification, development and support of those in change leadership roles. This work included the definition of key change leadership roles at different levels:

Change Drivers - Executive / Senior Managers with ultimate accountability for the successful implementation of the changes across the organisation.
Change Leader – a representative group of Middle Managers / Supervisors responsible for implementing change within their departments and teams.
Change Ambassadors, Subject Matter Experts and Super Users – a representative group of Frontline Staff responsible for role modelling changes amongst their colleagues and providing input into the changes being made.

Four change leadership capabilities were identified and tailored to the different change leadership levels including:

A tailored change leadership development program was designed for Change Leaders and Change Ambassadors in collaboration with the Change Leaders and Change Ambassadors themselves. This development was incorporated into their fortnightly meetings that were focused on how to best lead the volume and complexity of change across the organisation at all levels.

OUTCOME

The definition of change leadership roles helped individuals to understand the organisational expectations of them in their roles. The Change Leader and Change Ambassador groups were integral in the successful implementation of a range of changes that impacted across the organisation, and were vitally important in shaping the people change approach. Their ability to make connections, ask questions, and communicate key change messages built buy in and support for the changes across the organisation.

ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN FOR HR

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:52:49 GMT

Industry: Government

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

In 2013, every business area was in the process of or had planed to go through some form of organisation design / structural change. TAC’s expenditure on external consultants was high, and the capability of the HR Business Partners to support business leaders in the assess and design phases of an organisation design project was low. The need was identified to build the organisation design capability of HR Business Partners and Consultants, and realise up to a 40% saving on external consultants.

OUR APPROACH

As the Change and Organisation Design Consultant, I engaged a global expert in organisation design, Naomi Stanford to support the co-design of a TAC organisation design methodology and toolkit with the HR Business Partners and Consultants. Through 9 x 1 hour coaching sessions and a 5 day workshop, the team worked collaboratively to develop:

5 principles of engagement: 1) focus on the business outcome, 2) partner to make it happen, 3) keep it simple, 4) be transparent, 5) question, validate and challenge views.
An organisation design methodology with 4 phases and 30 supporting tools
An A3 quick reference guide of the TAC organisation design methodology and tools
An online portal for central access to the organisation design methodology and tools.

OUTCOME

The following benefits were realised from this piece of work:

Project delivery – the work was delivered under budget and ahead of time.
Organisation design artefacts – the methodology and tools were documented and stored centrally
Capability – pre and post organisation design capability assessments showed a capability uplift, and the HR team were able to provide organisation design consulting to business stakeholders
Financial – internal capability was utilised instead of external consultants for 3 organisation design projects in 2014.

BOOTCAMP INDUCTION PROGRAM

mattdson74@gmail.com (Matt Dickson) — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 04:33:43 GMT

Industry: Mining

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

Spotless is the leading provider of integrated facilities services in Australia. The work Spotless does across industries in a range of contexts has a significant impact on the clients and communities they support.

To meet the increased service expectations of one of their biggest clients, BHP, Spotless needed a partner to design and develop an induction and training program for all staff working for that particular client at different mining sites.

The project presented a significant chance to reshape the experience of many thousands of BHP employees and contractors, and the communities in which they live.

WHAT WE DID

We designed, developed and facilitated a blended learning program including elearning modules, video, face-to-face workshop, manager and ongoing support materials.

Features of the fully-immersive, 5 day, face-to-face bootcamp included an emphasis on connecting and used high quality, graphically designed assets that reflected the demographic of the young workforce

THE OUTCOME

By delivering a learning experience that represented a case-in-point for the customer experience sought by BHP, Spotless employees were able to experience the importance of great service and connection first-hand.

Feedback provided both by program participants and end customers (mining site residents) indicated that the program fundamentally reshaped the quality of life for people living in mining sites.

LEADING CHANGE PROGRAM

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 06:42:55 GMT

Industry: Energy

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

We were engaged to design and deliver a learning program as part of an initiative to assist the total workforce to understand and lead themselves and others through changes to their work environment.

This was a large project, rolled out over several months and consisted of face to face workshops for individuals and leaders.

There was also the need for a digital animation resource to pick up new starters and people who missed the initial program rollout.

WHAT WE DID

We designed session plans, detailed facilitator guides, workshop aids and participant materials. Our facilitators trained trainers and facilitated multiple workshops over several months.

We designed and built a 2 minute animation that summarised the main points of the program, using an everyday situation that most people would be able to relate to. The moving house scenario could be used to demonstrate the typical phases of change and strategies that could be employed to maintain a productive approach.

CO-DESIGN

We worked with the L&D and Comms teams to ensure the correct language, visuals and voice for Western Power. This included fine details including voice over and character style for the video resource to ensure the best cultural fit.

CHANGE VIDEO

COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS AT ANZ

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 06:04:08 GMT

Industry: Banking & Finance

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & OPPORTUNITY

To promote a culture characterised by employee engagement and empowerment, ANZ identified a need to support people managers to conduct challenging and necessary conversations with direct reports in a constructive way.

In light of the organisation's digital transformation agenda, an opportunity was further identified to make a step change in how learning is conceptualised and delivered at ANZ, through leveraging Virtual Reality (VR) technology in crafting this solution.

WHAT WE DID

Identified 5 best practice principles of courageous conversations: Be Prepared, Be Centred, Be Open, Be Caring, Be Real
Designed an immersive, multi-faceted learning experience incorporating VR
Wrote and filmed 3 relevant scenarios for VR including managing performance (e.g. a disengaged long term employee), engaging a high performer who is not living the organisation’s values and communicating impacts to roles when there is organisational change)
Quick Reference Guides to support ongoing learning and just-in-time support

CAPABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR MONASH UNIVERSITY

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 05:55:57 GMT

Industry: Education

Service area: Capability

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Monash University identified the need to invest in the development of its professional workforce in order to be recognised as the number one University in the Asia Pacific region by 2020. Human Resources (HR) conducted a review of its talent management strategies to ensure that the HR function was meeting emerging challenges and supporting the achievement of the University’s strategic objectives. The review identified that a targeted approach to building organisational capability was required, which included ‘professionalising’ their professional and administrative workforce. Up until this point, the University’s HR processes were not underpinned by a core capability framework and the small number of existing functional capability frameworks were inconsistently designed and applied.

Dylan and Justine were involved in developing:

A core capability framework for professional staff and a number of functional capability frameworks for specific functions
A capability self-reflection tool, linked to guidelines on how staff could develop their capabilities
Guidelines for staff and managers on how to use the capability framework
A map of existing staff development programs to the capability framework.

OUR APPROACH

First, a thorough desktop review of broader University strategic plans, functional plans and existing capability frameworks was undertaken. This data was coupled with an external scan of best practice capability frameworks in the field. The data was synthesised into an initial set of capabilities and tested in a ‘capability selection interview’ with senior stakeholders. Capabilities were prioritised and selected on the basis of alignment to broader University strategic goals and functional priorities.

Subject matter experts were brought together to support the build of their functional capability framework, where capability names, definitions and core proof points and proficiency levels (foundation, intermediate and advanced) were designed in an interactive and engaging workshop.

Outcomes

At completion of detailed design and validation, all core and functional capabilities were packaged to ensure the capability frameworks were simple enough for easy application. Finally, enabling tools were developed including a self-reflection tool to ensure each professional staff member could understand the critical capabilities relevant to their function and could reflect on their current capability in partnership with their supervisor. This was accompanied with a ‘how to’ guide for staff and supervisors on how to use the capability frameworks to support identification of development opportunities and options. Lastly, existing learning options were mapped to all new core and functional capabilities.

EVERYDAY LEADERSHIP

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 04:18:45 GMT

Industry: Retail

Service area: Leadership

This retail asset management company was formed through the merger of two leading names in retail property and works with local shopping centres through to retail destinations that can compete on any international stage. We were approached to design and deliver phase two of a leadership development program for 300 frontline and mid-level managers.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Following the success of the Everyday Leader program (which was Highly Commended at the 2017 AITD Excellence Awards), they seized the opportunity to continue building the skillsets of ‘everyday leaders’. This continued investment recognises that it’s often the small things, done well and consistently, that have a big impact on performance and engagement.

We partnered with the retail asset management company to create Everyday Leader Beyond, a six month leadership development program that reinforces the role of leaders in embedding the organisation’s new values and translating its brand strategy of Making Things Better, Easier and More Enjoyable into a lived experience for teams.

Everyday Leader Beyond consists of a masterclass series, peer coaching sessions, eLearning modules, People Leader Portal resources and a “Better Way” Showcase to highlight new ideas and ways of leading.

WHAT WE DID

Leadership Development
eLearning
Workshop Facilitation
Peer Coaching
Train the Trainer
Digital & Print Collateral
Learning Consulting
Blended Learning

CALLOUT

Blended Learning Nous

Our ability to craft a multi-faceted program combining experiential, social and formal learning through both digital and face-to-face channels was key to success. This blended approach sparked deeper dialogue between participants, a greater level of comfort using technology for learning and increased commitment to reflective practice (leaders regularly blogged about their experiences and reflections).

Joined Up Approach

While the target audience for Everyday Leader Beyond was frontline to mid-level managers, we understood the need to involve senior leaders in the solution to create a unified leadership community. One mechanism for this, was the creation of specific roles for senior leaders as ‘captains’ of the peer coaching groups. This role enabled leaders to share their experience and insights with the next level of leaders, while getting to know talent from different parts of the business.

Facilitation Firepower

With 82 shopping centres across the country, the workshop and masterclass components of the Everyday Leader programs required our support for national delivery. We drew on our pool of dynamic facilitators located in every major capital city to engage and stretch participants in immersive and highly interactive sessions. .

KEY OUTCOMES

The development of new, ‘everyday’ leadership skills with 84% of participants agreeing that they were able to put this learning into practice. What’s more, 69% of senior leaders sponsoring the program noticed the subsequent capability uplift.
Post program, 87% of participants said they had a better appreciation of a leader’s role in creating memorable employee experiences and felt confident to do so.
82% of participants felt more connected with their peers, willing to collaborate and united as one leadership community.
92% of senior leaders agreed that their sponsorship and involvement in the program added value to their own leadership development.

SUPPORTING PEOPLE THROUGH CHANGE

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 04:06:51 GMT

Industry: Transport, postal and warehousing

Service area: Leadership

In an age of digital disruption, as our client evolved to meet marketplace challenges, the skills and capabilities of employees needed to evolve and support future business aspirations.

Managing the accelerating decline of letters as customers continued to switch to alternative modes of communication, significant changes faced the organisation, including a three year program of job reductions in the postal business.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Equipping employees w ith the skills and practical strategies to come to terms with and manage change emerged as a priority. A blended, “Leading Self Through Change” program incorporating face-to-face workshops, eLearning, a participant journal and practical resources was developed to ensure that employees have the understanding, tools and resilience to effectively navigate and lead themselves though ongoing ambiguity.

In addition, managers needed the skills and confidence to lead their teams through the disruption while balancing the commercial implications of the transition.

We designed, developed and deployed a blended learning program comprising of four modules for Leading Self through Change , each exploring a different aspect of an individual’s change journey including:

Module 1: Understanding change and my reactions to it
Module 2: Responding in a constructive way to changes
Module 3: Sustaining my progress and wellbeing during change
Module 4: Supporting others to manage change well

As well as four modules for Leading Others through Change :

Module 1: Gain insight to leading others through change
Module 2: Take action to support and respond to their teams as they work through change
Module 3: Leading a sustained approach to dealing with ongoing ambiguity and change
Module 4: Change communications challenges

WHAT WE DID

Learning Design
Content and Tool Development
Facilitation and eLearning Deployment
Training Evaluation
Reporting

CALLOUT

Blended solution for modern learners

Our design is a blended learning solution that meets the needs of modern learners (i.e. they are “just in time, just enough and just for me”). Ingredients of this program included immersive workshops, individual and group coaching, eLearning, learning games, curated content, workbooks, quick reference guides, performance support tools and learning transfer activities.

Learning that's Sticky

While we pride ourselves on the progressive nature of our learning design, we are also highly pragmatic. With strong expertise in neuroscience and contemporary adult learning principles, this learning was designed to promote enduring behavioural change. We do this by targeting the ‘knowing- doing’ gap, through solutions with a bias towards application and reinforcement to maximise learning transfer on the job.

Evidence Based Content

Our firm includes a wide range of specialists (management consultants, organisational psychologists, organisation development specialists, instructional designers and digital creatives) which means we are one of the few teams in the market capable of designing and delivering end-to-end learning experiences that are equal parts creative and commercial. We draw on our honed methodology to ensure that every learning experience we create is based on scientific evidence, while engaging and impactful in its application.

KEY OUTCOMES

Over 2,500 employees have participated in the program to date
Extremely positive feedback regarding its value and impact
The program is considered to have positively contributed to improved employee engagement , the achievement of back-to-back enterprise agreements and minimal reputational risk as employees felt supported and respected through change
Reduced resistance to change was identified as a contributing factor in the successful launch of innovative new products and services as our client consolidated its position as a leading eCommerce business

GETTING BACK TO WORK - POST COVID

dylan.flavell@springpoint.com.au (Dylan Flavell) — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 05:52:15 GMT

At our recent Talking Point breakfast, we explored two questions:

Does getting back to workplaces matter and if so, why?
If returning to the workplace does matter, how do we get that to happen?

Here's what our research tells us:

A NEW ROUTINE WITH RATIONALE

It is important to not just identify the behaviour we want to change but be clear about the underlying rationale, expectations, standards and rules around the behaviours we want to move towards.

THE REWARD MATTERS

People need to see value in returning to the office. If their new routine is not reinforced, breaking old habits and establishing new ones will be difficult.

CHANGING HABITS TAKES TIME

Some habits take 3 -6 months to take root. For leaders, it's important to allow for a gradual transitionary period to give allowance to build new habits.

New Paragraph

LINKING LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:22:33 GMT

Industry: Consumer Electronics

Service area: Leadership

Cosmo is a leading industry player in the field of product design & development for advanced engineered soft-goods, mobile device storage & accessories. Cosmo blurs the lines between cutting-edge design and the mass market.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

Cosmosupplylab has grown both rapidly and organically since its creation in 2000. However, with around 10,000 employees spread across the globe, Cosmo had yet to develop a strategic approach to assessing and developing their most senior leaders. The Group HR Director approached Spring Point to support Cosmo in creating a leadership development and assessment process that aligned with their strategic direction and goals.

In consultation with both the President and HR director at Cosmo, Spring Point established an assessment and insights approach needed to explore perceived capability gaps across the executive leadership team. With a team of Spring Point consultants on sight at Cosmo HQ in Hong Kong, leaders were taken through a number of assessments: including a personality measure, cognitive assessment, the Denison 360 leadership assessment, and a behavioural interview.

The results of these assessments allowed Spring Point to develop an objective picture of the leadership capability gap and its impact on business performance. The senior leaders, Director of Human Resources, and President of Cosmo then took part in individual deep dives to better understand these results, followed by a roundtable session designed to begin the build out of individual development plans and associated learning pathways. To ensure buy-in and commitment from senior leaders, these learning pathways were co-designed to include the capabilities they were most interested in pursuing. Over the next three months, spring point had regular check in meetings with all senior leaders at Cosmo. These check in meetings proved to be incredibly valuable in ensuring leaders took the actions needed to improve capability and achieve sustained high performance in their roles.

WHAT WE DID

Denison Diagnostics
Executive Leadership Development
Executive Leadership Assessment

CALLOUT

Best Practice in Business
By combining psychological principles with pragmatic commercial acumen, we were able to provide valuable insights that acted to inform the senior leadership development approach at Cosmosupplylab.

A Globally Enabled Team
A globally en abled consultancy means that we were able to provide on-the-ground support at any given time.

Engage through Co-design
Through taking a co-designed approach, we created personal development plans that really engaged the interests and motive of leaders at Cosmo

KEY OUTCOMES

Provided capability insight into t he senior leaders at Cosmo
Co-designed development plans and individual learning pathways for leaders
Realigned role requirements an d team working rhythms to improve business performance and role fit

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 06:11:44 GMT

Industry: Financial Services

Service area: Leadership

One of the largest banks by market capitalisation in Australia, they approached us to redesign a major development program that was launched in 2014 for leaders to uplift operational excellence across the organisation.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTION

While the content of the program has largely hit the mark with its audience, feedback highlights opportunities for the delivery to more closely meet the needs of modern learners, including greater choice in when, where and how learning is accessed. Given the value of the program to enhanced business operations, the redesign also needed to consider how to deliver the program at scale for global cohorts to expand its impact.

Redesign of the operational excellence program focused on ‘blending out’ the 11-module offering across a variety of digital learning channels to reduce the reliance on face-to-face delivery. Examples include eLearning, animation, video, screencasts and curated content. Broadening out the way that learners could interact with the content subsequently ‘freed up’ time within workshops to focus on application rather than theory, through job-relevant case studies, scenarios and peer coaching, boosting engagement with the material and enabling transfer of learning into practice.

WHAT WE DID

Learning Consulting
Learning Program Design
eLearning
Video Production
Animation
Content Curation
Graphic Design
Digital & Print Collateral

CALLOUT

Co-Design Emphasis
We partnered closely with subject matter experts, program alumni and end users to select the right learning channel for the right content. This required the ability to quickly ‘get up to speed’ with highly technical material and ‘keep up’ with knowledgeable SME’s as the redesign took place.

Art and Science
While focusing on creative and engaging ways to deliver the content, we also took a rigorous approach to making decisions about which learning channel to utilise. based on the stability, complexity and sensitivity of specific content. To support this process, we shared a decision-making tool with SMEs that considers the stability, complexity and sensitivity of content, promoting alignment and confidence with channel choices.

Digital Production Prowess
Our redesign halved the face-to-face learning time, while introducing 48 bite-sized digital assets of between 2- 15 minutes each. These various learning ‘chunks’ are designed to be completed as pre-work prior to practical and applied face-to-face sessions. Our strong project management and production skills ensure that the design and development of this large and highly reusable asset set meets or exceeds agreed time, budget and quality measures.

KEY OUTCOMES

With content mapping now complete, in the second phase of this project we will design and build the new format face-to-face workshops, as well as the 48 digital learning assets that now make up the program, prior to relaunching it across the enterprise later in the year.

DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP AT SCALE

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 06:37:08 GMT

Industry: Science, technology and engineering

Service area: Leadership

Against the backdrop of an acquisition of a much larger organisation and significant organisational change, employee engagement results and anecdotal evidence highlighted the pressing need to increase the capability of people leaders. Leaders needed to have the capability to support their people to belong, engage them to deliver and develop them to grow within their roles and careers more broadly.

Our client recognised that people leadership was a cornerstone of a great organisation, while also being key to growth and delivering on customer promises. To improve talent attraction, retention, engagement and performance, we worked in partnership with our client to develop a program to be rolled out to 142 people leaders initially, although this population has now grown and additional cohorts have been included.

CHALLENGE

An analysis of data and documentation provided by our client led us to believe that increasing the quality and frequency of conversations between people leaders & direct reports would have the greatest impact in ‘unlocking potential’. This was felt to be particularly true given the highly technical backgrounds of the workforce.

A nine month People Leader Code leadership program was designed around 10 critical conversations that leaders need to have with their people.

These were arranged into 4 modules using a range of blended learning methods, including:

launch video to energise participants to the program
pre/post program 270 degree assessments
custom e-learning
immersive face to face workshops
on the job learning tools
on-the-job learning transfer activities
curated extension activities and content
group and peer coaching
practical tools and resources to support performance
graduation activities that helped embed practices and build networks

WHAT WE DID

Needs Analysis
Accelerated Design Workshop™
Blended Program Design
Learning Assets Build
Facilitation

KEY OUTCOMES

The program garnered participant and stakeholder feedback that excelled beyond expectations
The flexible delivery design enabled busy leaders to maintain momentum
From push to pull means plans to extend to matrix leaders
Significant improvement in engagement data attributed to program

CALLOUT

Leadership development designed to impact culture

The program was designed to create networks and relationships across the organisation with participants learning from the facilitator and each other. The design of the program, not only develops the people leaders actively participating in the program, but also those leaders' leaders, through one to one sessions and learning transfer activities.

A true blended learning program at scale

A range of learning methods to teach content (bespoke 10 minute elearning), enable skill building (face to face workshops), apply back in the workplace (learning transfer activities) and reflect on the learning (peer to peer coaching groups)

Reinforces performance links

The program starts with a one to one session, sharing feedback gathered from the participant’s people leader and team members – this is repeated after one year. This individual feedback provides insight for the people leader and motivation to make a change. The repeat after one year is to give participants a target and motivation to work towards improvements and as well as helping to evaluate the program.

BLENDED LEARNING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 23:39:45 GMT

The benefits of a blended approach to learning are clear; there is an overwhelming body of research which shows that well designed blended learning promotes greater level of knowledge retention and mastery than face to face training alone.

(Training & Development Feb 2017; Bersin. J., 2006).

The benefits of blended learning include combining the efficiency of digital (online) learning with the human touch of in person, or face-to-face learning.

So far, so good: but how does good blended learning design play out in today’s world of remote working and digital connection? How do we retain the human touch, which brings opportunity for social learning, and deepening understanding through rich conversation and application?

Through much experience and research, Spring Point has developed a blended learning methodology for which we have won multiple awards. Our model, which is grounded in the dominant theories on creating behavioural change, is a proven method for creating behaviour change at scale. And the good news is, this methodology is equally effective in a fully or partially digital environment.

For each stage of the learning journey, there are efficient and effective options for digital delivery:

Using our Scaled Behaviour Change Design Formula, we’ve taken several clients through rapid redevelopment of face to face training into a blended, fully digital solution. So what have we learnt along the way?

Get active. The precondition for effective learning — virtual or otherwise — is voluntary engagement. Turn learners from passive passengers to active participants through structured opportunities to engage fully. This is especially important in virtual workshops.
Be selective. Know your audience, and get super clear on performance outcomes. When moving to a digital solution, you’ll likely need to scale back your content, so hone in on content or activities which have a clear link to achieving outcomes.
Break it up. As we all know from countless Zoom meetings, it’s more cognitively demanding to attend virtual events than face to face. We recommend the optimal time for workshops and coaching sessions is no more than 2.5 - 3hrs.
Be creative ! When delivering content through digital channels, it’s easy for learners to tune out. Get creative with your content, so you grab your learners’ attention and hold it.

CREATING CULTURES OF BELONGING: HERE'S WHERE TO START

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 03:25:11 GMT

As discrimination and violence against people of colour and other marginalised groups gains visibility, organisations are becoming increasingly vocal in their support for diversity and belonging. While this has been met with some cynicism, we know from working with dozens of client organisations that many hold a genuine commitment to fostering diversity and belonging in their workplaces.

Yet despite this commitment, and substantial efforts by some, many organisations have failed to make sufficient progress towards genuine diversity and belonging. There are countless reasons for this, not least because discrimination and bias is baked into many of our processes, our systems, ways of interacting and thinking. Creating organisations that are truly diverse and foster belonging is daunting and difficult work.

Organisational culture remains an important avenue for such efforts. This is because cultures are not an end in themselves - they are not policies, practices, capabilities; rather they create the environment in which employees and leaders are supported or prevented from bringing about positive change; the environments in which well-meaning efforts are embraced or rejected.

The path to cultures of belonging will look different for everyone, but they will all take time, effort and a lot of learning from mistakes. Nevertheless, there are many things organisations can do to fast track their success. We propose these Six Principles based on research and experience as a good place to start the work:

1. Understand what belonging means to your employees

This will differ greatly across employees, and the first step is giving them a chance to express what they need. This can be as simple as a survey, or more involved, such as ASIO’s diversity networks, 1 with employees provided resources, governance and sponsorship to establish groups to tackle diversity issues and offer support. Importantly, listening to employees will help identify marginalised groups, understand employee expectations and how far you have to go to meet these. It will also help you manage expectations, because you won’t always be able to give people everything they hope for.

2. Leverage your existing culture and values

Understand your current culture and find ways to use this to bring belonging to the fore. For example, if your culture strongly values professionalism, make considered inclusion of diverse opinions in decisions a matter of professionalism. If your culture is risk averse, make it risky to exclude others from decisions. If working within your current culture is not enough, manage resistance by selecting interventions that at least don't work directly against your culture.

3. Manage tensions

There will be tensions, both real and perceived, between doing the right thing and doing what is best for short term business or personal gain. For example, the need to include more diverse opinions may clash with a value in speedy decision making. Organisations need to understand what points of conflict exist between their ways of working and inclusion efforts and provide employees with a clear path for navigating them. The famous Netflix Culture Manifesto 2 does a great job of articulating such trade-offs.

4. Focus on a few behaviours and work practices

While mindset and bias play an important role in culture, they are notoriously difficult to describe, change and measure. Yet mindset does follow behaviour, so focus instead on a few behaviours and work practices that require your people to put belonging into action and reinforce them rigorously.

5. Focus on the local

Belonging means different things to different people and cultures. Therefore, efforts to bring it to life will need to look different across teams and geographies. Help teams and leaders define how they will bring broader organisational expectations of inclusion and belonging to life at their local level, and to determine the unique behaviours they will take to achieve this.

6. Measure it

Change is an ongoing process, so be sure to measure it as such. Identify the lead and lag indicators of success at both local and organisational levels, pulse them regularly and make the results salient to decision makers.

The world has a long way to go before we achieve the equity and justice we all deserve, and organisations have a critical role in getting us there. Creating cultures that foster belonging and positive change is an important avenue for this essential work.

Links

https://www.insidehr.com.au/asio-diversity-capability-innovation-adaptability/

https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

Connect with us on LinkedIn

SURVIVE AND THRIVE WHITEPAPER

dylan.flavell@springpoint.com.au (Dylan Flavell) — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 05:48:55 GMT

As a consulting firm we support the world's best companies to develop culture, leadership and capability solutions to enable strategy execution. Never before have these organisational attributes been so critical to an organisation’s ability to survive and thrive, recognising that great change is always accompanied by real hardship, and opportunity.

With information and opinions abound, we sought to clarify what history and evidence reveals as the critical considerations for organisations seeking to not only survive, but to be prepared to thrive when volume and activity returns. This article distills our insights from research and evidence, and summarises key areas that our progressive clients are investing in now to ensure they can continue to be market leaders for the clients, consumers and communities they support.

Check out our Spring Point Survive and Thrive Report below and get in touch to find out more.

springpoint

TRANSFORMING CULTURE FOR STRATEGIC IMPACT AT NTT DATA

TRANSFORMING GLOBAL LOGISTICS LEADERSHIP

SUSTAINING HIGH PERFORMANCE AT NOTE PRINTING AUSTRALIA

ALIGNING CULTURE & STRATEGY AT LORT SMITH

EMBEDDING CAPABILITY AT DEVELOPMENT VICTORIA

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AT DP WORLD

POWERING CULTURE AT JETCHARGE

SIX ‘MUST HAVE’ HUMAN CAPABILITIES NEEDED TO LEVERAGE AI

DEVELOPING EMPLOYEE CAPABILITIES FOR LEVERAGING AI NEEDS TO GO BEYOND THE TECHNICAL

LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY IN THE AGE OF AI

WHAT LEADERS WILL NEED TO KNOW, AND EMBRACE TO THRIVE IN THE AI ERA.

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TRAITS FOR LEVERAGING GENERATIVE AI

GENERATIVE AI WILL CHANGE THE WAY SOME OF US WORK, BUT ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE WILL NEED TO ADAPT TO ENSURE ETHICAL AND EFFECTIVE USE

'DISCOVERING THE LEADER WITHIN' AT PEXA

SCALING LEADERHSIP DEVELOPMENT AT DAHLSENS

DEFINING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET SCHOOL

Industry: Education

Service Area: Organisational design / Transformation

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE AT FINDEX

CREATING AN INTERACTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE AT DAN MURPHY'S

THE SKILLS OF GREAT HYBRID LEADERS

WHAT'S CHANGED, AND WHAT'S NEEDED NOW

So what’s changed in terms of leadership over the past three years?

Capabilities of effective hybrid leaders

BLUEPRINTING A PERFORMANCE CULTURE

SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE & STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION AT COLES

WHY YOUR CULTURE CHANGE PROGRAM WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY FAIL!

O r, THE 7 THINGS TO STOP DOING IF YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

What to STOP now!

Culture is a performance lever, use it!

IS YOUR ORG CULTURE RIGHT FOR DIGITAL ACCELERATION?

assessing cultural readiness for digital transformation.

CREATING A COMPELLING EVP FOR CHANGING TIMES

Industry: Travel / Insurance

Service area: Transformation

IGNORE, RESTORE OR EVOLVE? THE NEW WORKPLACE DILEMMA

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ORGANISATIONS TO MAKE SOME CRUCIAL DECISIONS.

Our key reflections from research and our current experience are:

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE VS ENGAGEMENT: TIME FOR A RETHINK

WHY CULTURE, NOT ENGAGEMENT, IS THE NEXT HORIZON FOR BUSINESS EXCELLENCE

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE: THE STRATEGIC LIABILITY OF OUR TIME

CODE OF CONDUCT WITH A DIFFERENCE

CONNECTING PEOPLE THROUGH SERVICE

ADVANCING HUMAN RESOURCES FOR FUNCTIONAL EXCELLENCE

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM SPRING POINT

LEADERSHIP ESSENTIALS TO ELEVATE PRODUCTIVITY

ALIGNED VALUES AND LEADERSHIP

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOR TRUE TRANSFORMATION

BUILDING BUSINESS PARTNERING CAPABILITY

THE PEOPLE LEADER CODE

SUSTAINABLE CULTURE FOR SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE

CREATING AN EXCEPTIONAL MEMBER EXPERIENCE

ADJUSTING FOR THE TIMES

ALIGNING STRATEGY & EXECUTION AT SUPERFRIEND

CONTINUOUS CONVERSATIONS FRAMEWORK

BRINGING THE CITY OF GEELONG'S VALUES TO LIFE

LINKING CULTURE & PERFORMANCE AT MYER

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AT MYER

AGILE ACADEMY AT 7-ELEVEN

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AT AUSTRALIA’S MOST ICONIC DEPARTMENT STORE​

ENGAGING THE WORKFORCE IN MEANINGFUL ORGANISATIONAL VALUES

GOOD VALUE FOR GOOD WORK

PLACING THE COMMUNITY FIRST IN EVERY WAY

SUPPORTING THOSE WHO SUPPORT OTHERS

MAXIMISING STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE IN A COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

TAKING TO THE SKIES FOR FUNCTIONAL EFFICIENCY

VALUES RESET AT ESS SUPER

IMMERSIVE LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT & TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

BUILDING CHANGE LEADER CAPABILITY

ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN FOR HR

BOOTCAMP INDUCTION PROGRAM

LEADING CHANGE PROGRAM

COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS AT ANZ

CAPABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR MONASH UNIVERSITY

EVERYDAY LEADERSHIP

SUPPORTING PEOPLE THROUGH CHANGE

GETTING BACK TO WORK - POST COVID

LINKING LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY AT AUSTRALIA’S MOST ICONIC DEPARTMENT STORE