In the post-pandemic world of hybrid working and the increasing demands for transparency and ethical responsibility from consumers, customers and employees, organisations need to dig deeper when designing internal processes to maintain the nuance that will keep them relevant and retain business and talent.
20 February 2023 • 3 min read
Photo by ÉMILE SÉGUIN on Unsplash
Things have changed. We all know that but how is design going to respond to that challenge? By going deeper.
We need to re-design the core fundamentals of a business so there is a deeper connection between organisational purpose and how that manifests itself in the behaviour of staff and the interface with customers. This poses new challenges for creatives in how these are all brought together in the look and feel of an organisation. This complex issue is one I am working on with Stafford based Hope Creative Design. We came together because we know customers and staff need more and saw potential for collaboration.
Our starting point is like many others, the pandemic. So we posed ourselves the question: “What happens if do not aggressively challenge the old ways of doing things?”
The answers were many but we immediately saw that a top priority is that Talent will be harder to retain. People want to work for companies they believe in. That means ensuring purpose, values and behaviours are connected and reinforced. You need to design the right sort of culture, which is highly visible and constantly communicated to the team.
Leadership is vital because having clarity over your purpose and spending time examining what that means so that business leaders can get the right balance between their passion, their work commitment, and well being. It has to go deeper than ping pong tables and free fruit.
What does that mean for the work place? Do you even need an office? Research now shows that hybrid working is here to stay so managing that shift to maintain productivity and customer focus is a task not to be taken lightly.
Business media is awash with discussion of what this might mean. Hope Creative Design recognised this and they engaged me as a coach and leadership expert to examine what this might mean for SMEs and small teams within larger organisations.
Then of course there is the customer. Their needs and expectations have radically changed as well. They want brands they can connect with at a deeper level, to be more relational than transactional.
We take as our starting point in Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle where he identifies three key statements:
Using this framework I can use a number of techniques which uncover the true purpose of an individual or their business. This is an exciting opportunity for me. In the past I have found that creatives really need to interrogate this process to create more impactful creative proposals.
Our conversations with Hope Creative Design have been focused on what a Leadership Coach and a Creative Design agency can bring together to create a more powerful design solution that helps the organisations shift into a post pandemic business environment. It’s a great collaboration of specialisms that brings the best from both to create something that really drives individuals and organisations to think of their ‘why’.
Highfalutin I know, but to really stand out in the market place, to improve productivity and deliver great value for your customer, being clear about your ‘why’ is fundamental.
Hope Creative Design and I want to help build businesses and organisations with rock solid principles, authentically acted out every single minute of every single day.
Of course, this still includes logos and websites. But it goes further than this, it means signage, leadership behaviours, customer engagement process, internal comms and so much more. It has become more than an OD exercise, more than a re-branding, to a fully in-depth and fundamental examination of what makes up a business.
I’m looking forward to sharing our experiences as we continue to build this proposition. Check in regularly, it’s going to be a journey!
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