Creating honest conversations around cultural change
To remain competitive in a rapidly changing industry, BAE Systems need to become more agile, efficient and collaborative in the way they work, to enable business transformation. To support this change culturally, they created a set of new company behaviours, to be adopted across the organization.
To ensure the behaviours would be accepted and embraced by everyone, BAE Systems first needed to get everyone on the same page about what needed to improve. At the same time, a company-wide survey found that conversations around ‘behaviours’ often triggered worries of blame, leading to an attitude of silence around important issues related to culture. They needed to craft more effective stakeholder communications, through brand awareness campaign that stimulated engagement and participation.
We created The Big Debate, a platform to activate honest conversations about their culture – both good and bad. The idea involved staging a debate arena, where colleagues were read a series of statements related to key cultural issues, and asked to choose their stance – YES or NO – by moving to either side of a central line. Colleagues were then asked to explain their choice to the opposing side and discuss the response. The result was a series of engaging films shared globally, encouraging people from around the businesses to join the debate. The campaign empowered people to share ideas on how to drive change, embedding the behaviours and fostering brand advocacy across the company
