Better culture

The only reason to talk about culture is to determine whether it’s helping you or hindering you from achieving your goals.

Faster culture change

Culture change doesn’t have to take years. You can create a high-performance culture rapidly.

Most culture change programmes change little or nothing. We change everything. And we do it fast.

It seems to have become accepted that culture change takes years. But some organisations don’t have years. Maybe performance has plateaued, maybe the business is nose-diving, maybe new entrants are eating market share, maybe you’ve been so successful that you’re now experiencing growth pains, maybe you have amazing ambitions and want to, or need to, achieve them far, far, sooner than far, far later.

We take our work and our clients seriously.

We try not to take ourselves quite so seriously.

What we do

We work with organisations, teams and individuals to rapidly create a high-performance culture.

We know what works and we know how to waste an awful lot of time and money.

Essentially, we help to build environments in which everyone understands that to work in your organisation you have two jobs:

1) The job you were hired to do

2) To continuously raise the performance bar.

We bring a proven set of methodologies to enable leaders to rapidly do this and to ensure that people want to work in this way.

Spoiler alert

Culture change doesn’t happen by putting posters of your values on the walls… or on everyone’s lanyards… mugs…

How we do it

The method is simple.

The core element of our behaviour development programmes is that they focus on generating collective and individual actions to change the culture and enhance organisation performance.

However, the art of culture change is in ensuring that each element works optimally.

Our approach recognises that starting at the top of the organisation and hoping everything trickles down to all corners of the organisation doesn’t work. Our approach drives culture change from the top-down AND from the middle-out AND from the bottom-up.

Strategy: the only reason to talk about culture is to determine whether it’s going to help you to achieve your strategic goals or get in the way.

Define clear behavioural standards: we will help you to define the specific behaviours needed in your specific organisation at this specific point in time. Generic leadership models have no place here.

Develop people against those standards: our unique approach to developing behavioural performance is always at the leading edge of leadership thinking – and doesn’t involve old-school training techniques and tools. We leverage the latest insights and tools from neuropsychology and behavioural science.

Measure performance and apply consequences: we will help you re-configure your performance management system so that it’s measuring the right things and able to apply positive and negative consequences. We’ll also focus on upgrading the customs and practices around performance management.

Infrastructure: our process and organisation design experts will help align your processes and structures to enable the culture you need.

Senior leaders role modelling: ensuring that your senior leaders are aligned, committed and role modelling the required behaviours is mission critical.

 

  • Leadership development: developing your leaders specifically against the required behaviours. This is about laser focus on the behaviours and changes needed to drive sustainable performance in your organisation.
  • Team coaching: the biggest chokehold on an organisation’s performance is the psychology of the senior team. We go deep with teams – high challenge, high support work to help them optimise their collective performance and drive culture change.
  • Executive coaching: one-to-one coaching with one of our coaches. Our coaches either have a psychotherapy or C-suite background

How can we help?

Guest speaker

Perhaps start with Andrew speaking to your Executive Team or at your leadership conference.  Start to engage your leaders in the importance of culture change and how to do it.

Analysis & Diagnosis

You might then ask us to analyse your existing culture and define the culture you need.

 

Curation

If you feel you need further support (perhaps you don’t have the right type or the right amount of internal resource), we can help scope and curate a culture change programme
that ensures that the target culture is embedded in all corners of the
organisation.

Planning

We can then help you turn that into a detailed, task-level plan. Including a resource schedule so that
you know the size and scale of the commitment.

Execution

Once that’s done, we can provide an expert team to work with your people to execute the plan – and leave tools and skills for you to use after we’ve gone.

The book

Better Culture, Faster

Because you don’t have time for bullshit

At last, an instruction manual for changing an organization’s culture.

Most attempts at culture change in organizations fail. Leaders often resort to activities that, at best, tackle the peripheries of culture, or what they’ve seen done elsewhere, but which don’t get under the hood of what’s really going on. And as a result, growth continues to lag, performance continues to fall off a cliff, or their toxic culture continues to make headlines.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and it’s easier than you might think to make real change right now. Andrew Saffron shows you exactly what to do, and how to do it, in order to get to the heart of your organization’s culture, and how to change it for the better, fast.

Formats available: Hardback, Paperback, eBook

Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing

Publication date: 26 Nov 2024

Praise for Better Culture, Faster

“Andrew came into our business at a time of life or death change – which we were finding difficult to navigate. He gave us the framework, the tools, the skills, the knowledge and the confidence to rapidly deliver the culture changes we needed. Read this book – it will help you do the same.”

Laura Peach, Finance Director, Nebosh

“Andrew’s approach to culture change is a testament to his deep understanding of the subject. He strips away the nonsense often associated with cultural transformation, highlighting the power of honest leadership and dedicated effort. His book is a practical guide for leaders who want to make a real change in their organization.”

Seth Kybird, CEO, NTS

“This is breathtakingly brilliant. Just incredible. I devoured it from cover to cover and loved every word.

This book is a complete joy. And it will change your life. It is warm, funny, compelling and astoundingly easy to read – you won’t want to put it down. It will rid you of all the nonsense you thought you knew about culture and how to change it. And replace it with everything you need to make your culture the performance accelerant it needs to be for your business. A must read for every leader.”

Julie Nerney, Transformation Leader and Non-Executive Director

“This very funny book will revolutionise your business. If only I had a business.”

Jo Brand, Comedian

“Andrew provides productive challenge and encourages candour. The net result is an organisation unified to deliver the strategy.”

Laura Wise, Chief Officer Governance & Risk, NEBOSH

“Having seen Andrew in action this book will be gold dust for any leader or practitioner”

Mark Smith, Chairman, Ignite

“When it comes to culture change, Andrew is my ‘go-to’ expert”

Mark Long, CEO, Ignite

The Author: Andrew Saffron

Andrew Saffron is one of the world’s leading culture change practitioners, whose high-challenge but engaging style has won him acclaim and awards. He’s worked with many global organizations, Government departments and not-for-profits to rapidly change their cultures. Some of these organizations had been in a flat spin, some had a performance level that was starting to plateau, and others had been performing well and wanted to get even better.

He has led many culture programmes and has turned an often mystifying and unfathomable subject into a practical approach to changing culture in any organization, fast.

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The team

Janan Kubba

Janan Kubba

Who: Janan leads our coaching team.  She brings 25 years of experience as a psychotherapist to inform and support her work as an Executive Coach.

What: She specialises in coaching elite level performance from leaders in high-stakes businesses.  She brings knowledge of how to operate with resilience and creativity under pressure.  Her background in psychotherapy and experience in coaching C-suite leaders, enables her to quickly understand the root causes of performance challenges and rapidly move on to addressing them.

How: Most frequent feedback about Janan:  “She’s changed my life.”

Andy Cleaves

Andy Cleaves

Who: Andy brings extensive C-suite and Board experience (including several CEO roles).  His ability to clear through mountains of data and information to define what’s really going on is second to none.

What: He brings a high challenge, high support approach when working with senior teams.  He helps them to understand what they need to do to optimise their performance.  From micro issues like ensuring the quality of data that comes to them for decision-making, to macro issues such as process and behaviour for collectively stewarding the organisation.

How: Most frequent feedback about Andy:  “The epitome of iron fist in velvet glove.”

Sharon Davies

Sharon Davies

Who: Sharon combines a deeply pragmatic approach with the need for creativity when curating and delivering a culture change programme.  She has worked with hundreds of teams in many different sectors to help them drive their own and their team’s performance.

What: She has a rare mind that combines the ability to project manage multi-billion-pound programmes with the ability to work with teams and individuals on the behavioural repertoire needed to optimise performance.

How: Most frequent feedback about Sharon:  “It’s like working with your very smart best friend.”

Andrew Saffron

Andrew Saffron

Who: Andrew has 30 years of experience in curating and leading culture change programmes internationally, in the Commercial and Government sectors.  He brings a proven methodology and creative approach to rapidly evolving an organisation’s culture.

What: He brings his own thinking to the subject rather than rely on out-of-date concepts.  He challenges individuals and teams to own issues and supports them to rapidly take action.  He’s as comfortable working with the CEO as he is working with forklift truck drivers.

How: Most frequent feedback about Andrew:  “Knows what to do, and tenaciously helps us to get it done.”

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