Transforming Culture through Leadership
Overview
Everyone is operating in a challenging economic environment. For PDSA, this means demand for our services continues to increase, whilst the donated pound becomes harder to obtain. Releasing the knowledge in the organisation and embracing change to challenge the status quo, was essential to ensuring that we continue to provide an excellent service to our clients and customers.
The outcome was a unique leadership journey that would support 7,000 staff and volunteers across 50 clinical sites and 180 shops. The BRIC framework creates a cohesive leadership ethos that can be lived and breathed by everyone.
Impact
The BRIC programme s impact is evident across the organisation. Leaders and employees are embracing change. With more people encouraged to suggest ideas to shape our organisation, we are seeing key processes and policies being constructively challenged and streamlined to reduce bureaucracy, whilst new income streams are being identified.
Leaders are growing not only their own leadership skills, but also that of the teams around them and are being more proactive in managing their teams with 80% of leaders believing their leadership skills are stronger than ever
Innovation
Working on the principle of tell me I forget, show me I remember, involve me and I will learn we recognised the need to engage our leaders in realigning our leadership beliefs. BRIC is a belief based approach enabling our leaders to Believe they are Responsible, Involve Others and Challenge , providing a complete framework – a clear language that can be used as the foundation for further skills development.
The concept BRIC is used as the anchor to learning and a physical model brick (containing notes and aide-memoirs) is used as a reminder to our leaders of their commitments.[/one_half_last]
Insight
Our staff surveys gave us an insight into where the organisation was and areas for further development, revealing a desire to cohesively celebrate, champion and reinforce our leadership approach. But it didn’t tell us everything; it provides a map, but until you start your journey you don’t really know what the terrain is like and therefore you have to change and flex. Most learning programmes focus on what s wrong, the gap rather than enhancing existing strengths. We initially spent time focusing on what wasn’t working than celebrating success. After acknowledging this, recognition and praise are at the forefront of BRIC.
Inspiration
We are taking all of our leaders on the same journey. In celebrating our past to shape our future, we have encouraged more cross-functional working, as people at all levels learn and grow together. Leaders are stepping-up to the challenge and PDSA is benefiting from this.
We have shared PDSA s new BRIC approach at a recent HR conference; the thinking behind it has encouraged others to discuss how this could be used to help their journeys.
BRIC is more than a piece of narrative – it is owned by the organisation and has become embedded in everything we do.[/one_half_last]
Speaker
Rebecca Tindall
Head of Learning and Development
PDSA
Rebecca joined PDSA in September 2010 and is responsible for the Learning and Development (L&D) function at PDSA. Rebecca has over 10 years experience within Learning and Development where she has had the opportunity to work on a number of organisational change programmes. Her commercial background enables her to align all development activities to the requirements of the business objectives.