Culture
Change

You probably know the story about a couple of young fish, and another fish – and their experience of water.    It goes something like this – Once Upon a Time…. two young fish meet an older fish swimming in the opposite direction – and as they pass, she says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”    And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “what’s water?”

Of course, the point of the story in relation to a culture conversation is that it illustrates how culture is all around us, we’re not aware of it (usually), and we just work within it.  And it’s hard to talk about.  And it’s hard to see.

The Thorpebird team all have extensive experience of working with organisations around culture diagnosis, development and change.    Our experience is diverse – though our approach is aligned.  We don’t believe culture can be changed by someone in a leadership team deciding it needs to change.  We believe that culture changes slowly – at an individual level.  We think culture evolves through the conscious and unconscious efforts of the people it includes – and so our approaches and ideas will be focused across communities and groups within any organisation – rather than a top down ‘big bang’.

We also start from a belief that culture work is likely to be a bit messy.   We can help by bringing a wide range of experience in using different approaches, and how to take elements from each to bring some kind of shape to the efforts of you and the people you work with.  It’s never ‘just the people’ and it’s rarely ‘just the processes’ – we can help you understand what’s going on, and work alongside you to develop a way forward that feels right in your organisation, and is built to be sustainable.