The Issue

Lysander partnered with one of the Big Four banks to design a culture, leadership program after senior leaders had begun to recognise the importance of proactively building the right culture in the early days of the Royal Commission.

The Goal

The program was developed to support leaders to co-design, communicate and embed deep cultural change that was so urgently needed. The aspirations of the program were clear: equip the business to maintain a leading market role despite significant adversity and tumultuous change, build stronger internal and external relationships, enhance collaboration amongst and between teams, define clear expectations of behaviour and accountability to this, and create an explicitly safe speak-up culture, where problematic, unethical, non-compliant and non-inclusive practices could be called out.

By initiating this culture, leadership program, the leaders gave voice to the social risks that a ‘business as usual’ approach was exposing them to and were committing themselves to strengthening the social condition of the business to benefit the organisation as a whole.

The Process

Lysander took the leadership team through a culture strategy process to deeply immerse them, establishing vulnerability, trust and team cohesion. This allowed the team to properly table, explore and debate the real issues at play within the business, things that were previously unspoken and unaddressed, as well as building clarity so everyone was clear and on board with direction, priorities and expectations. This was the basis of a common language and set off ‘above and below-the-line’ behaviours communicated via a success map – rolled-out across the business. Further to intensive team cohesion work was the build of individual leadership awareness and capability development. A structured approach including professional coaching was crucial to equip leaders to engage their managers, to drive and embed transformation throughout their teams. Interactive team culture workshops allowed everyone to engage, created true cohesion in each team across the business and was the start of a true speak-up culture. Finally, a series of workshops were run for every team to build collaboration and coaching skills that enabled everyone in the business to build productive, authentic relationships internally and with all their customers and partners.

The Outcome

The culture, leadership and collaboration program ran during a time of upheaval, uncertainty and public shaming, yet the results have been exceptional, with the business winning an important industry award, seeing improvements in employee engagement and achieving outstanding Risk Culture Audit results never before witnessed – illuminating the achievement of a true speak-up culture across their business. The work is ongoing, but strong momentum exists and people are energised to continue the transformation.

Published: October 2019