Origin Housing are a London Housing Association responsible for over 7800 homes. This 100 year old charity was on a two year programme of change which included updating their systems, ways of working and refreshing their values.
You might think this would be a positive, inspiring piece of storytelling, sweeping up the employees and moving them to embrace this more fit-for-purpose future, but when we worked with their ‘change champions’ they told us there was frustration amongst their colleagues. There had been ongoing infrastructure issues which had impacted on the staff’s ability to deliver critical customer service. We realised that the Change story needed to acknowledge the failings that had occurred in the past and connect with the staff sense of purpose. So we embarked on a piece of storytelling…
“Origin 2020 is underway with a mission to help you do your job as well as you want to do it. We all came to work for Origin Housing to make a difference and change people's lives but right now our current systems and processes are getting in the way of that. So Origin 2020 is about resetting the dial.”
The Change Champions used this loose script for how they spoke about transformation and spread the word within the organisation. Providing a clear way to talk about change, in a way that they felt would land well with their peers, and in a way that helped the Champions to feel more comfortable about their role as key communicators and leaders of the mission. It took them away from the reticence they had over what they felt was previously overly optimistic messaging which didn’t recognise the frustrations of staff.
The Senior Leaders’ session to plan the story for managers produced a very different result. We identified that it was essential for managers to be on board for the transformation to succeed because if they blocked the change then their teams could not transform effectively. We realised this story needed to be much more pointed and the draft version, which of course was never publicly shared, was as follows:-
“Get on board or get off the bus”
Whilst appearing pretty stark it was highly effective, but it was also couched in a much softer narrative…
“By embracing the new values, you have the opportunity to make your team shine. The values aren’t just to drive good practise, they will also help us to re-set the dial on behaviours that have been getting in the way, and this includes leadership behaviours that block our progress.”
Alongside this core messaging, we also worked with colleagues across the business on ways to bring six refreshed organisational values to life for staff. This included the Senior Leaders making personal commitments to tangible actions and behaviours, and identifying staff stories which illustrated the values to be told verbally and in short films.
