UGRS: CRACKING THE CORPORATE CULTURE CODE

Leaders now realise that their culture is a foundation stone upon which everything sits. If there is a resistance to change, culture is at play. If there are issues in terms of how internal functions work with one another, again, culture plays a big part. And if the customers’ experiences are talked about but not really committed to, the culture is at fault.

Steve Simpson has developed a concept called UGRs – unwritten ground rules – that breaks new ground in terms of helping leaders both understand and strategically improve workplace culture. This presentation, sought by companies across the planet, is tailored for the organisation’s context and is guaranteed to entertain, inspire and educate.

CREATING A CULTURE OF SERVICE

One of the great myths to do with improving customer service or crafting a great customer experience is that this is achieved by upskilling staff. In other words, if people are suitably skilled, they’ll deliver a great customer experience.

Steve Simpson argues this thinking is wrong – as it overlooks the importance of workplace culture.

Steve suggests we ought consider a typical scenario, where staff are sent along to ‘customer service training for a day or two. These employees return to work fully energised and with a new ‘kit bag’ of customer service tactics and strategies. And two weeks later, everything has returned to how it was prior to the training. Why? The culture!

This presentation sheds light on what teams can do to acquire a genuine culture of service and to lock that in as a point of differentiation.

CREATING A SAFETY CULTURE

One of the problems in industries where safety is an issue relates to sustaining people’s focus on being safe.
In this presentation by Steve, he shows how despite the best intended safety training initiatives, the culture of the company counts most. Unless the culture is right, safety is compromised.

If you want a completely new angle on safety, and practical tips on what can be done to garner ownership and lock-in a safety culture, then this is a presentation you need to hear.

The concept of unwritten ground rule (UGRs) has enormous application in organisations where safety is an issue – yet remarkably has been focused on by very few organisations.

IN THE DRIVERS SEAT – LEADING CULTURE CHANGE

Steve Simpson recently conducted some research which included the following question:
If the culture of your workplace was to become as good as it realistically could, how much improvement would there be on people’s performance/productivity?

The results? Over 90% of senior leaders said 20% or more improvement. Six out of 10 middle managers said 50% or more!

The results point to many leaders abrogating their responsibility. With such massive capacity for improvement resting at leaders’ feet – the culture of the workplace – Steve argues that focusing on culture is a central and fundamental role of leaders. In this presentation, Steve shows what leaders can do and the potential results…

UGRS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

How many of us have heard someone say something like “hold your breath for long enough and the moves for change will fade away”? People verbalising this are actually articulating an unwritten ground rule (UGR) associated with change.
In essence, what people are saying here is that there have been attempts in the past to implement change, but little eventuated. So people’s recollection of events from the past creates UGRs that lock-in, and will make change more difficult into the future.

It’s in this context that Steve creates a new angle on change management in his presentation. Often people pay lip service to the idea that the culture must be right for change to occur. They pay lip service to this because they are unsure about how to change the prevailing culture.

That’s where Steve helps create clarity. He introduce the UGRs concept, shows how UGRs prevent change, and gives practical guidance on what leaders can do shift the UGRs, and the culture to be more receptive to change.

This angle is guaranteed to be new and different!