Organisational culture. The invisible and not-so-invisible force that shapes how we work and how we feel while we’re doing it.
As OD consultants working across the public sector landscape, we’ve noticed the continually increasing focus of organisations wanting to better understand, and ultimately improve, their culture.
There’s a growing recognition of its impact on organisational effectiveness, and this is being felt keenly as they navigate unprecedented levels of challenge and change, highlighting the importance of having our organisational culture work with us, not against us.
This becomes even more relevant and important as many teams and organisations look to move towards more integrated operating models (as we’ll outline below) to become more effective, both as viable businesses and for the people and communities they serve.
The era of culture integration: an introduction
If you work within a public sector organisation, 'integration’ is a word you’ve likely heard a lot over the last few years.
Integration can be described as the process of ‘forming, coordinating or blending into a unified whole’ and within the health and care landscape, there’s been a whole lot of integration going on. The formation of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs), now enshrined in law, sets out the legal responsibilities for NHS commissioning services to come together to better serve local populations. NHS provider organisations are contending with large-scale mergers, population-based transformation programmes redrawing organisational boundaries, and the move towards provider collaborative working. NHS England, NHS Digital and Health Education England also concluded their integration on 1 April, as decided by the Secretary of State for Health and Care to ‘simplify national leadership of the NHS and create greater synergy around the People Plan, education and training…’.
And this is all taking place against a backdrop of growing service needs, strikes, persistent staffing shortages, and chronic funding challenges. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report for 2022 saw the UK placed in the bottom 5th percentile for employee engagement against other European countries, highlighting that just 9% of UK employees are actively engaged at work, and with staff engagement and culture working hand in glove perhaps it doesn’t feel surprising that organisational culture may be paying the price.
The ambitions for organisational integration are often linked to benefits for efficiency savings, better use of resources, and more holistic, joined-up care, ultimately to better streamline pathways and access for the populations we serve. Often, the case for integration from a patient perspective is clearer, and the right thing to do.
But what impact does this have on the leaders and staff, who must navigate and implement integration ambitions while continuing to provide safe, effective, quality care to their populations?
We have seen first-hand the challenge leaders are grappling with, as they not only continue to enable healthy, thriving cultures within their own organisations but take on the role of change agent, curator, and ‘culture carrier’ for bringing together and harmonising multiple cultures, through the practice (whether deliberate, but often not) of culture integration. As leaders are recognising, it’s not enough to integrate the business model and assume the right culture will follow. Left to its own devices, culture can become an unwieldy powerful force and master saboteur, evaporating even the best-laid plans into thin air (which never fails to bring to mind Peter Drucker’s infamous quote of ‘said culture eating said strategy for breakfast’).
How do we enable effective cultural integration?
Traditional culture enablers which may have served organisations well up until now suddenly become the achilles heel for integration. The conditions and behaviours which supported teams, particularly through times of crisis are now getting in the way of effective integration. Picture the service with a ‘family-feel’ culture, high trust, deeply bonded relationships between line managers and their teams, and a high sense of belonging and safety - fantastic, right?
But what happens when a service like this needs to align to a new integrated, ‘one organisation’ operating model?
A strong ‘family-feel’ culture becomes a monumental culture barrier. Teams don’t want to risk losing these bonds; fears are high over losing existing reporting lines. Safety and security feel jeopardised. Often, an individual’s ‘home’ team relationships are cited as the primary source of enjoyment in a role which regularly brings exceptionally high levels of challenge, difficulty, and stress.
What can we do about it, and where do we begin?
Through our experience, we’ve noticed there are steps change agents and leaders can take to better support culture change and culture integration efforts, and we’ll be sharing more on these in future blogs and dedicated Spotlight webinar sessions.
Our next blog will focus on where to begin (Hint: by understanding and assessing the culture you have now).
We hope you’ll enjoy the series. If you have any questions or would like to talk to someone about culture assessment, change or integration, please contact our accredited culture specialists, and authors of this blog,
