A primer (part 1)
I’ve just run another course on Culture and auditing culture in London with 12 in attendance. This brief article gives a summary of key points concerning common misperceptions, and is offered as a counter-balance to much of what is currently being said about this topic. The second article will discuss specific approaches that, on my analysis, will lead to long-term progress in this arena.
Expectations of those attending
We discussed why people had come to the course and they said:
- “Our new company is defining its culture, so we want to input to that”;
- “We have many mergers and acquisitions and see culture issues as businesses try to merge, which we want to better understand”;
- “We know it’s important, and want to think about a culture audit universe”;
- “Auditing culture came up as an External Quality Assessment topic, so we want to learn about it”;
- “Senior stakeholders have been talking about it, so we wanted to know more”;
- “Our internal audits of risks point to root causes of issues coming from culture, so want to be clearer about what’s going on”;
- The remaining 6 attendees (50%) explained they had put a culture on their audit plan because it is a current hot topic, and now wanted to be clearer about how to do an audit.
I contacted [James] for advice as to how Assurance Mapping techniques could be applied in my own authority. Not only were his ideas very constructive, his approach was very professional yet carried out in a friendly, easy going manner which greatly helped my understanding of the issues involved. James was then always happy to deal with any follow up queries I had and he helped to fine tune and discuss the approach with the rest of my team who similarly very quickly formed the same positive view of James’s style and manner. We have recently introduced this new approach into my authority and the results and comments to date have been very encouraging, thanks in no small way to James’s advice and assistance. I would have no hesitation recommending James to anyone.
James has helped me and my team in a number of areas, examples being improving the way we conduct and report on our audits and helping with our assurance mapping. This has all been done in a positive and supportive manner, helping the team to embed learning from these sessions.