Investment in Corporate Culture

Culture Change: Banking

This organisation is a major Bank operating in Scotland and at the time of operating (Mid to late 90’s) managed the activities of over 350 Branches with 6,000 employees.

Culture Change after Acquisition by Australian Bank

The overall objective of the intervention was to prepare the Bank for a major Customer Care drive through Head Office and affecting all business activity. It was critical to ensure that a ‘robust’ customer focused culture was in place, cascading down from the top of the organisation to all activities and through all functions.

Culture Change & Strategic Focus

The Culture was to be the platform that would supersede the roll out of several strategic initiatives.

Only the top 1% of the staff were to go through this high level process. They, in turn, were to become role models to drive the process through functions and across processes.

For this reason the top team and the immediate 40 direct reports were to commit to a cultural change programme which would;

• Explore and employ the core issues in driving Culture Change through a series of development events.
• Design specific Workshops highlighting case studies, introducing key people who had implemented changes within organisations in Financial Services.
• Set up long-term cross-functional projects that would focus upon implementing best practice both in terms of internal processes and external relations with customers.
• Implement changes within the culture of the Bank to ensure that it achieved a more competitive position in terms of cost/incomes ratios in relation to that of core competitors.

Benefits of the Culture Change:  A Stepping Stone beyond the Millenium

• Over a period of two years, the top 40 direct reports of the top team each attended two day workshops focusing upon best practice in organisational change.
• Top managers were able to ‘model’ change management strategies that worked by researching a large variety of successful organisations that had managed change.
• Eight long term projects were delivered and implemented, ranging from and (impacting upon) improving operational efficiencies and delivering customer satisfaction.
• Those attending developed their change management competencies for new positions within the evolving Bank.
• Organisations as diverse as BP, GE Plastics, Royal Mail, Marks & Spencer, Britannia Insurance, GE Capital, Sigma, Mortgage Express and many others acted as ‘host’ organisations, sharing ‘best practice’ in change management.
• Project Teams went on to pursue new responsibilities and challenges.