How we supported Aurora Services Culture Improvement & Leadership development programme
Building a stronger organisation case study
Success Story At a glance
Client: Aurora Services
Brief: Work with the leadership team to improve company values and develop management leadership skills.
Location: Oxford Belfry Hotel
Lead time: 2 months.
Event time: Various programmes over 12 months
Stage One: Unifying
​The Brief
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Our client is on a mission to improve its company culture and develop its management team's leadership skills to produce a more effective and dynamic organisation.
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The Challenges
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The challenge is changing company values and culture, and this takes time. We discussed at length with our client the current state the organisation was in and where they would like to get to. This level of development requires a systematic and a carefully managed approach. Luckily, our client was fully committed to its mission.
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Our Approach
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Head of Marketing, Gary Downey, has used our end-to-end event management services for Oxford events in the past and approached us about developing the company's culture and the team management team's leadership skills. The initial brief was to pull everybody together with a motivational competitive company fun day. The aim was to start this programme with a whole company approach and then scale it down to improving processes and leadership skills within the management team.
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The Initial Event
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The initial event's aim was to bond the entire company with a competitive but motivational school-style sports day. Whilst these styles of events might seem quite basic, the hard work is done on the pre-event motivational promotion. Aurora Services were experts in marketing this event to its staff and encouraging them to participate at a competitive level. Despite very poor weather conditions, the teams turned out and performed with incredible zeal and commitment. Which immediately fostered a positive company culture.
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To unite the day time competitive event, we also put on an award-style dinner in the evening. This helped to further reinforce the company values and reward team performance.
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The Fun Day
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To some organisations, a 'school sports' style fun day might seem rather juvenile, but it's important to remember the child stays within all of us. Sometimes we need a leveller style event where everybody can just let go, engage with their competitive streak with enjoy being part of a team. This style of event is ideal for both competitor and observer - who quite naturally come together within a team. What really works for this style of event is the pre-event behind-the-scenes marketing effort, forming people into teams, encouraging teams to turn up in a uniform colour and with an innovative team name. It's fundamentally as important as the event itself and, sadly, where a lot of organisations fall short.
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What the Head of Marketing said:
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"We couldn't have done it without you, you executed both events with the precise level of understanding and
professionalism we were looking for"
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Gary Downey, Aurora Management Services
Company Culture Development
Whole Company Inclusive Summer Fun Day
Leadership and management team experiential event
L&M Awareness Day
Leadership and Management Awareness Day
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Stage two of this culture development process was to host a Leadership and Management Awareness Day with all the senior management teams. We think of this as a firmware update, rather than a lecture, aimed at those in positions of management who need to exercise a higher degree of leadership, To put it in a practical sense, you can't just put a slide up on how to lead a team and expect immediate practical leadership skills - you literally have to experience it!
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This day consists of
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Stage one: a brief analysis of what a team looks like and an understanding of individuals within that team, who they are and what motivates them
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Stage two: exploring the differences between leadership and management and understanding the skills crossover
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Stage three: a practical exercise highlighting the skills needed to lead a project or task and observing the fundamental mistakes we all make
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Stage four: a group experiential activity that summarises all of the learnings from the previous sessions
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​Stage five: 360 degree review of the teams' performance and how we practically can transfer these lessons into the workplace.
This is where our wealth of practical experience comes in!
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​Our founder, Simon Maddison, leads these experiential events. He has 12 years of practical leadership and management experience in the Royal Navy as a bomb disposal diver and rising to command a mine warfare vessel. He also has 25 years' experience running and managing companies and leading individuals within his companies. His skill is understanding how human dynamics at play within organisations either assist or negatively affect company culture.
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Simon has worked for some of the world's largest organisations, helping develop management team's leadership skills with innovative experiential team events. His mantra is: "We learn from what we experience, not from what we hear."
The Bridge - a practical solutions for our client
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After spending two intensive sessions with our client and understanding the problems within their management leadership team, we put forward a proposal for the entire team to undertake The Bridge experiential team building event. Simon proposed at least half the team actually building The Bridge (which has no plans), and the other half of the team observing and critiquing those undertaking the build process. During this event, we swapped out individuals to deliberately create the unpredictable environment in which we all work and need to respond to. ​
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The Bridge is a powerful yet simple experiential event to help teams practically understand the dynamics that naturally occur when a team collectively solves a problem. Critiquing each other and combining this with a post-task follow-up observational feedback session helps everyone in the organisation spot opportunities for improvement.
The continued development plan
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Our client found this observational technique, coupled together with an experiential event, extremely powerful iand has contracted us to continue the company's culture development programme.
What the CEO said:
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A brilliant start to our L&M programme by Simon and his team, we have certainly laid the foundations to build a stronger team"
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Robin Stanton-Gleaves, Aurora Management Services
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Our stand out success for Aurora Services
Our Standout Successes
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End-to-end event management support ​
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Unifying company event
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Practical Experiential leadership development support
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Practical Implementation to Improve Company Culture
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Venue finding support at the Oxford Belfry
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Bespoke event theme design and execution
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Fun day, gala dinner and experiential team event
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On-site event management
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Event Contingency Planning
The Result
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The result was a greater understanding of the company's objectives and a practical solution for setting on the right path for improving company culture and building a stronger management team.
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What We Delivered
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Full end-to-end event management
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Experiential team building event, The Bridge
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Fully managed company Fun Day
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Gala evening dinner
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Full supplier Management
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Venue Coordination and Logistics Management
Aurora Services Management and Leadership Awareness Day.
Questions we get asked about reinforcing company culture
How long does it take to change company culture?
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That's a tricky one, and it depends how committed you are. It all starts with observing what kind of company culture exists, talking at a very high level and understanding what that looks like and if there's a willingness to change it.
It certainly doesn't change overnight, but you can start the process quite quickly, particularly with a unifying event and then breaking it down into further organisational or departmental rollout programmes. Like most things, it stands at the top and percolates down, and you can definitely spot it when it's already in a great organisation.
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What practical steps can we take in our organisation to improve company culture?
That's a very good question, and there's lots of things you can do to improve company culture.
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First of all, it's about understanding the individuals that work with you and what motivates them, and also listening to what individuals and teams need to effectively perform the roles
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Second do individuals know in your organisation where you have come from and where you are going? Large organisations are very good at communicating the history of an organisation and where they are heading and that everyone is fundamental to that journey.
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In addition, successful organisations are very good at organising inclusive events that unite, engage and foster better relationships. Whether these are team away days, management updates, company fun days, or Christmas parties, they all help to foster a postive better company culture.
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Can managers be good leaders?
Yes absolutely. Whilst there are fundamental differences between high-level performing leaders and managers, you can adopt many great leadership skills into your management style - hence the expression "lead by example". Quite often we find that managers have not been given sufficient leadership training and have usually been promoted into position by organisational change or professional ability. This is very evident when we present experiential learning events to our clients and usually results in a follow-up event to improve leadership qualities for line managers
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What is your lead time for this style of experiential event?
We're able to work to quite short lead times of 1-2 months as long as our founder Simon Maddison is available, as he tends to lead these practical 360-degree-based performance experiential team building events.
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Do you have any other ideas that helped improve a team's performance for a whole company?
Yes, one of our most powerful events is called Brand which helps foster and promote practical, collaborative working skills within a team whilst embracing and reinforcing company culture.
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How should I go about starting this process to improve my team's performance?
You can start by doing very practical things, including just going out for a social with your group and talking to them and listening. Listening is a powerful tool in your management toolkit and will often give you signals into how the team is feeling and ultimately performing. From this, you can build a programme of events that will help your team improve and ultimately that improves company culture.
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If you need support, give our team a call today and start the process of understanding how to build a higher performing team.
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Looking to improve your company culture?
Contact our team today
We would love to hear about your event. Why not send us a brief or call our team today.
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