Transforming organisations through enterprise-wide interventions

Rebecca Bales, Lumina Learning Partner

Transformation is all about change. When we think of transformation we’re thinking about wildly different change, like how a caterpillar changes to a butterfly. Something that looks completely different from the original has been created.

When we look at transforming organisations, there are a number of things we might want to change – outcomes, mindset, use of power, behaviours etc. Ultimately though, when we look at organisations, we typically want to change – to transform – the culture.

An organisation’s culture

Organisations may lay claim to an idealised values-based culture of help and harmony. But an organisation’s culture is not the mission and posters hanging on the wall.

So what actually determines an organisations culture? It’s all about ‘what happens here’. How do people treat each other? What is allowed? An organisation’s culture can be made up of and influenced by:

• Managers
• Leaders
• System
• Comfort
• Leading
• Responsibility
• Ownership
• Power
• Efficiency
• Head
• Heart
• Plan
• Vision
• Effective
• Goals
• Followers
• Direction
• Encourage
• Passion
• And more!

Transforming culture

So, with so many influences, how can you transform an organisation’s culture?

To change the culture, you need a top-down and bottom-up intervention. You need to infiltrate the whole organisation. You need an enterprise-wide intervention plan. But how can you make that sort of impression in the organisation and engage them enterprise-wide? It’s about:

• Making an impact – did you make a ripple, or a wave?
• Having a strategy
• The tools you use – what are you going to bring to the situation so they can learn how to change behaviour and attitude? – Our fleet of connected and interrelated Lumina Learning tools – Spark, Sales, Leader, Emotion, and Select – encourages  understanding and a common language across the organisation. The inclusive, jargon-free tools which minimise bias introduce each person to their own gifts, and what they have to offer.
• Your approach

Create a learning journey

To ensure long-term transformation, find partners who get the importance that it’s not an event, it’s a process. You need to establish a learning cohort that goes beyond the initial interaction.

Start with individual transformation, through looking at:

1. Behaviours – Lumina Spark
2. Core (what lies underneath the behaviours) – Lumina Emotion
3. Competencies – Lumina Select

Then cascade the learning throughout the business, for:

• Leadership
• Hiring
• Onboarding
• Teams
• Sales

Tips and techniques for transforming organisations

• At the centre of each engagement have a transformational anchor
• Customise your approach to meet the needs of the organisation
• Put together an engagement team
• Use that talent to create and design the best fit
• Utilise your resources available
• Familiarise them with the organisation and your approach
• Leaders must be held accountable to act and react in ways that support the new way
• The people must begin or continue to act and react in ways that support the new way
• Integrate this into the hiring process, the performance management process, and the team engagement process
• Then get out of your own way
• It’s not about you – it’s about the organisation and their needs

Watch my presentation on this topic here. View my slides from the presentation here.