Building a proactive culture in a public sector unit

smart/consult & smart/bench case studies

Our client, a government innovation unit, was established to help solve public safety and security challenges. Bringing together expertise from industry and academia, their aim is to innovate collaboratively and deliver front-line mission impact at pace. However, the unit’s multiple stakeholders (across government departments and public service providers) was slowing the pace of delivery, and this was having a knock-on effect on its culture. Employees became frustrated, and the sense of urgency that was originally one of their strongest USPs was compromised.​

Work needed to be done to create an optimistic, ‘can do’ culture, and then translate that into values and behaviours to keep it alive.​

To get the ball rolling, we scheduled an initial culture calibration workshop. This was designed to help our client and us to see what needed to change, and how it might be achieved. Engaging with senior stakeholders and team members showed us that their existing mission statement felt invalid. But rather than starting from scratch, we asked the participants to tell us what was working well, so that we could build from the ground up. Identifying a “to-be” vision statement meant we were able to align existing values and behaviours, and refine those – rather than re-write them. This helped create a sense of ownership and achievability. From this, we developed a compelling narrative and messaging set, brought to life via a powerful communications plan. Playbooks, talking points, show-and-tell sessions, office display materials and much more enabled us to really cement the enhanced way of working, and gave our client agency to own it themselves.​

Our initial discovery work and subsequent culture communications was a step-change in our client’s trajectory. The business has grown significantly over the 5 years since we began our engagement with them; they have added multiple customers and project successes to their list, and repeat business is the norm as customers believe in their culture and their mission.​

 Smart/tasking priorities providing ongoing support as a trusted partner, so we continue to find ways of optimising how this client handles its culture, values and behaviours both internally and externally.