Cultural Change

XYZ Financial Services is a Sydney based investment services company employing 150 staff across three offices. XYZ enjoyed considerable financial success following wise investments post the global financial crisis in 2009 which saw the modest 10-person firm scale quickly. XYZ were the A-typical “Wolf of Wall St” style company which celebrated financial success in exuberant means whilst arrogantly risking client funds in ever daring investments. The culture at XYZ reached breaking point when one broker was found guilty of insider trading, four cases of unfair dismissal were upheld at the Fair Work Commission and more than ten cases of workplace bullying and harassment were being investigated by the Work Health & Safety Commission.

Bob, the founder of XYZ Financial Services had taken his eye off the ball. Following the rapid expansion in 2012, Bob handed over the day-day management of the firm to focus on his golf handicap and real estate investments. Now, with XYZ facing financial ruin, Bob returned to pick up the pieces. He quickly identified that the root cause of XYZ’s issues were ingrained in its culture.

Bob fired the CEO and replaced one other like-minded executive before re-instigating the historic values of the business that enabled them to enjoy the success of 10 years before. These values were at a complete 180-degree difference to the values the company had been displaying and therefore, Bob knew this change would not happen overnight.

Step 1 was to ensure the entire organisation understood what the business values were and how they were to apply these values in their workday. This required every leader in the business to truly identify with the values. Once this was confirmed, Bob needed every leader to raise the awareness of these values regularly with every employee.

Raising awareness of the new company values was simply achieved as leaders were able to use deBa to focus their conversations on the behaviour-based values with their team members. The deBa reporting tools ensured leaders of leaders were able to observe their subordinate’s leadership and provide guidance and direction when required.

Importantly Bob was able to identify those leaders within the organisation that were ‘not on the bus’. The deBa dashboards quickly highlighted leaders that did not truly believe in the new direction Bob was taking the business on which enabled targeted coaching of the specific individuals. In a rare number of cases, the coaching was unsuccessful and the leaders’ parted ways with XYZ Financial Services.

Today XYZ Financial Services is considered an employer of choice with a meagre 2.5% annual employee turnover and industry-leading profitability.