By Danae Johnson and Charles Holmes

Why change? Your organization is performing well: things are pretty good for the most part. Your customers seem happy enough, employee satisfaction scores are high, and business is good. No compelling reason to change, could have been the answer. Instead the executive team at BlueShore Financial (operating name of North Shore Credit Union) – a 2014 HRMA Award of Excellence: Innovation finalist – chose to redefine, redesign and reinvent themselves.

Two years ago, this BC-based credit union stepped up to explore strategies for taking their already successful organization to the next level.

In this three-part series we share insights and learnings from three distinct stages of a culture change journey with BlueShore Financial:

• Challenging the status quo
• Tools to diagnose and interpret culture
• Results and impact over time

We’ll share how an organization can move from good to great by building a healthy, financially sustainable values-driven culture. We’ll explore learnings about thinking from the inside out as part of a re-branding and re-inventing process. We will also explore how to speak to different demographics to realize the potential of innovative opportunities in a multi-generational workplace.

Like technology, people practices and organizations are continuously evolving at rapid speed as workforce demographics shift. This fast-paced evolution prompts business leaders and HR practitioners to constantly look for new and innovative approaches to increase employee and customer satisfaction and overall performance results. While flavours of the month come and go, a healthy culture is an enduring constant that is at the core of outstanding organizations.

The Challenge
 BlueShore Financial was already in a strong position with high levels of employee engagement and a healthy culture in place. It was financially profitable with strong leadership at the helm. At the mid-way point through a rebranding and redefining process, with the vision of becoming a “boutique financial institution”, they engaged us to assist in the culture change process.

The organization had been built on a set of values; however, unintentionally over time, their values had lost meaning among employees. In order to successfully implement the new vision and shift the culture, a renewed connection to values would be required. And those values would need to be lived by all in the organization, fully integrated into its DNA.

The challenge, in collaboration with an amazing HR team, was to determine how we could use values to shift an already successful organization to a higher level of engagement and performance. And further, how to ensure these values would be universally understood, embraced and serve their true purpose in taking BlueShore Financial to the next level.

Read Part II now.

Danae Johnson is a leadership coach, engaging facilitator and culture transformation catalyst. She is the founder and principal of Thinking Partners, a consulting company committed to improving business results and leadership capacity through coaching, strategic human resource practices and values-based cultural transformation. She is based in Vancouver, BC. www.thinkingpartners.ca

Charles Holmes is a master convener, gifted facilitator, skilled educator and empathetic coach. He helped establish the Dalai Lama Center for Peace + Education in Vancouver and co-founded the Academy for Systemic Change, a global community for collective capacity building in business, education and community development. He is based in Vancouver, BC. www.ceholmesconsulting.com