NEWS

Boosting performance through management development within organisation-wide cultural change

The ambitious goals that Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has set itself were a key driver for improving organisational and individual performance. They identified a number of ways in which they needed to raise their game, namely: promote a much stronger learning culture; develop consistency of management skills; enable and encourage managers to give open performance feedback; improve people’s confidence about driving their own performance and development; and stimulate connection with between individuals, directorates and with the organisation’s aims in general.

On this basis, the organisation agreed a need for a programme that, in broad terms, would sustainably raise management standards, be a vehicle for organisation-wide cultural change and development, and enhance the organisation’s ability to attract and retain first-rate people.

We worked closely with CRUK internal consultants Liz Bacon and Sarah Burns on designing, implementing and facilitating an ambitious 18-month programme for senior managers, and collaborated with other external suppliers to ensure the organisation benefited from an array of skills.

Specifically, the programme set out to:

Set clear behavioural expectations of managers in line with CRUK’s strategic ambitions

Provide a framework and support to help managers identify and address their training and development needs on an on-going basis, in turn driving a culture of continual improvement

Enable managers to become confident champions of individual and team development in their own areas

Support the widespread adoption of a more open and empowering management style

Promote cross-departmental working

Support a more consistent approach to performance management, and in particular promote open dialogue and a healthy flow of feedback. The intention of encouraging feedback to flow more readily was to enable the organisation to self-correct and retune its collective behaviour on an on-going basis

The programme in practice

The programme was structured around a three-way partnership between participant, line manager and organisation, and involved a chain of development events over an 18-month period such as one-to-one coaching, action learning groups, skill development modules and a bespoke 2-day Workout event that we designed and facilitated.

Workout combined reflection and learning about developmental goals with real time working on a CRUK issue, and was done in a way that embodied the culture the organisation was trying to create. The intention was to “be the change we want to see”. Our guiding principle throughout this imaginative event was to deliver genuine organisational impact by making sure that all individual and group work knitted into CRUK’s strategic vision and did not become solely a personal development programme. By keeping this focus firmly in place, we achieved a strong shift in a short period of time from minimal dialogue between participants to extremely open, direct and honest feedback and a commitment to sustaining this change.

Outcomes

The initial programme has now been successfully delivered to a cohort of senior managers and will continue to evolve as it’s rolled out to the next group.
In terms of tangible achievements, its impact has been extremely positive across the board:

Some very candid and frank conversations are happening at the most senior level about how the senior team are perceived and what they want to change about that

It is seen as positively contributing to the growth of individuals and teams, and people are now asking to join

Feedback between people is becoming the norm, and people are braving some of the more difficult conversations that they used to avoid

Collaborative working and new and better relationships are being formed across teams and departments

Line managers are beginning to embrace the programme as an aid to the development of individuals within their teams

There is an increased flexibility in management style, and managers are clear about what is expected of them

People are proactively contributing ideas without needing to be prompted, are openly talking about learning goals and are taking responsibility for their own development needs

By empowering their teams, managers are able to step back from tasks and take a more strategic view: they are becoming managers and not the 'doers'

The challenge throughout the programme has been to maintain momentum when all the managers have extremely busy jobs and are committed to the ambitious aims of the organisation. What helped was finding ways of continually keeping it in the conversation so that people eventually made the connections between their personal development and shifting the culture of the organisation, as well as holding the attention of Directors on what kind of role models they were being. Liz Bacon and Sarah Burns, as internal consultants, played a key role in this.

Comments from participants in the programme:

“I’ve matured into my role with the help of the programme. I’m far more open, collaborative, flexible and consultative”

“Development was something that happened to me and was organised by others - I have arranged my own development for the first time since joining”

“In my team feedback is seen as a ‘gift’ and not criticism”

“Being open and occasionally feeling vulnerable does not make you weak or incompetent - it makes you real

“I work less from a template these days and recognise the differing qualities/demands of my team. I’ve tailored my style and approach to individuals as a result”

Back to News