How Organisational Development Can Support Your Culture of Continuous Improvement

A blog by Elizabeth Bradbury, Director 

Over the past 15 years at Aqua we’ve seen a huge increase in demand for organisational and system cultural support.

By culture we mean “the norms, rituals, expected behaviours and unwritten rules within teams, services, and organisations”, or “the way we do things around here” as Michael West describes.  

The importance of a healthy culture on the quality of care and all-round experience is widely recognised e.g. NHS Impact, NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, and I wanted to share with you some of my insights into how Organisational Development (OD) can support effective continuous improvement by enabling leaders to create engaging, respectful and compassionate conditions that enables those at the point of care to have space and agency to innovate and improve.

Learning Through Listening

We use this approach to support either teams, departments or whole organisations where strained relationships or poor culture and behaviours are impacting on personal, team and organisational effectiveness. By listening intently and without judgement to people’s views we can help leaders and operational teams to better understand how their behaviour is perceived.

As part of the learning through listening approach, we:

• Listen – providing a psychologically safe and confidential space.
• Synthesise and feedback – themed feedback and change ideas are read back aloud to colleagues in workshops rather than Aqua’s report simply being circulated and read. This harnesses the power and benefits of active listening and the emotional human response this triggers.
• Co-facilitate action planning on the themes from the listening exercise, agreeing the measurable improvements

This approach generally takes between 3-5 months from initial scoping discussion to development of the action plan.

Improving Collective Leadership Impact

We love to work alongside executive teams and Boards providing OD partner expertise. This work improves collective leadership impact and the team’s ability to deliver their strategy and annual plan. One Chief Executive described this as helping the executive team “to be greater than the sum of its parts”. Often these teams have experienced significant changes in team membership which requires building trust and collaborative skills.

Often, with a senior team we will:

• Administer a baseline assessment such as Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team to identify team strengths and areas for development.
• Observe executive meetings and provide real-time feedback on team behaviours aligned to Lencioni’s five behaviours.
• Lead team workshops throughout the year using the baseline data and focusing on areas for growth
• Provide 1:1 leadership coaching for all team members enabling them to reflect upon and improve their own leadership performance assisted by the coach’s observation of them in action, and peer feedback.

The Organisational Development partnership lasts a minimum of 12 months, which means we can provide real value, building on insight and understanding, with a focus on what matters most to the board and executive teams.

Leadership Coaching

Our coaches derive real joy from our coaching work and we provide leadership coaching for senior leaders and Board members, individually or in groups (triumvirate team coaching is a real growth area). We coach and support leaders to identify what motivates them, to develop strategies to achieve ambitions and overcome blocks and to improve their own performance in a short period of time. Coaching helps people explore “what do I want?” and “what stops me?”

We generally offer 4-6 coaching sessions over a 6–8-month time-span. These sessions are delivered virtually or in-person. 100% of our coaching clients report that they have achieved their objectives.

A recent coachee said:

“The leadership coaching has helped me gain a deeper understanding of my strengths, weaknesses, values, and behaviours. It helped me identify and refine my leadership style, ensuring it aligns with my personal values and organisational goals. I also learnt to be happy with the life I have now and the role that I am in”.
Executive Coaching Client

If you’d like to know more or discuss how we could support your culture, leadership and organisational development work please get in touch, we’d love to talk!