Culture Consulting
Stronger culture, better retention, better results.
Your culture generates the conditions that will determine if you will thrive or falter in today’s complexity.
Culture drives the behavior of your employees, which is why it drives success too. There are three ways I can help: (1) culture coaching, (2) a six-month Culture Design consulting project, or (3) you can actually outsource your culture management function to me.
Culture Design
Designing a good culture always starts with an honest assessment of how your culture works today. From there you can prioritize the specific areas that will move the needle on results, and I’ll work with a team to design an extensive playbook of culture change action items that drive the behaviors that you know work better.
Bring me in for six months and I’ll generate the conversations and action planning that will move the needle on your culture.
How it works.
The project starts with a six month workplan taking you from assessment to action plan. I’ll do workshops and direct calls with an internal culture team to take them step by step through the process. Here’s how it works:
- Culture Assessment: All employees take my WorkXO culture assessment that reveals your hidden culture patterns and dynamics, particularly across subgroups.
- Culture Priorities: I’ll create an internal culture team that will analyze the data and draft up a small list of priority areas for the culture change.
- Culture Playbook: Then we write up “plays” for each priority—action items that will move the culture in the direction of the priority.
- Prioritized Pitches: A small number of plays will be approved by the management team so you can start implementation right away.
- Implementation Support: I can also help you manage the culture change as you start doing it.
6 months • real change started
Download the “standard” culture design proposal with full pricing details (you can always customize it later).
Outsourced Culture Management
Many leadership teams understand how important culture is, but simply don’t have the bandwidth to manage it with everything that’s going on.
So outsource the culture management function to me. I’ll serve as your Chief Culture Officer and be an integrated part of your team that takes ownership and accountability for culture management results.
How it works.
As a fractional Chief Culture Officer, I will devote at least 1 day per week to designing and directing all of your culture management activities. I’ll be integrated into your internal communications systems (email, slack, intranet, etc.), and your staff would have access to me like they would any senior leader. The work will be customized, but would cover areas like:
- Data: Gather and analyze culture data (possibly including a formal culture assessment survey).
- Culture Team: Stand up and run a small internal culture team; set its cadence and protect its focus.
- Culture Roadmap: Maintain an evolving quarterly plan of culture change action items; track progress, prioritize efforts, measure impact.
- Leadership Team: Facilitate quarterly senior team conversations on culture priorities and challenges.
- Change Management: Coach managers on handling culture-related issues on their teams; handle the people/conflict tensions tied to the culture work directly.
- Alignment: Monthly 1-1 with CEO on where culture stands and what needs attention.
your culture gets stronger
your team gets its time back
Contact me to discuss the project.
Why Do This Work?
Retention
People don’t leave managers, they leave cultures, and the case studies in my culture books always have people saying “I can’t imagine working anywhere else.” If you want to keep your good people, build a strong culture.
Performance
Designed cultures reduce the friction that misaligned cultures create. You’ll find that your people are much less often over budget and behind schedule on projects, and cross-functional collaboration will improve.
Change
There are six components of culture that have a dramatic impact on your ability to change, and my assessment will shine a light on where you need the most work. In today’s environment, this isn’t optional.
Our work with Jamie gave us insight into ourselves as an organization, what we do well, and perhaps most importantly, the themes within our culture that we believe make us unique and successful. We now have the words that help guide us with hiring new staff, performance management, and how to work together effectively every day. Jamie’s guidance throughout the process was invaluable to me and, ultimately, has proven invaluable to NBOA.”
Jeff Shields, CAE, FASAE, President and CEO
National Business Officers Association
My Approach
Culture patterns.
Culture priorities.
Culture playbook.
Culture management.
I have more than a decade of experience in culture research and practice inside organizations, and more than 25 years in consulting. Before that, I was in the conflict resolution field, and one lesson spans my career: It’s up to you to design and manage your culture, not the consultant. My culture design program gives you exactly what you need to be successful in doing that, and you have the option of keeping me on as an implementation coach after the design work is done and you move into culture management.
There is also a coaching option.
If you don’t have the time or the budget for my two more extensive options, consider bringing me on as a coach to the person on your team who owns the culture management function. I’ll make sure the work keeps moving and is aligned with strategic priorities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do all employees need to take the assessment?
No, if you’re large enough you can do a sample and still get results that can be validly applied to the whole organization. That said, the platform lets you slice and dice by subgroups, so the more that participate, the richer the analysis will be.
Who should be on the culture team?
You’ll decide, but I recommend broad representation both horizontally (departments) and vertically (hierarchy). At least one senior management team member should be on the team. In the end, though, the number one criterion is people who are excited about doing the culture work.
How does this connect to our core values?
Your culture work will never contradict your core values, but it doesn’t have to be organized around them either. Your culture priorities should be laser focused on what’s getting in the way of success right now, and your core values probably aren’t focused on that level of detail.
How does the implementation coaching work?
I work one-on-one with the leader who is charged with managing the culture work to ensure the plays are working, communication to employees is clear, and progress and results get measured.
Schedule a Free Consultation
Set up a call and I can go over how the process works and what results you can expect at each step in the process.