Hidden benefits of cultural change  

17th November 2017 / All, Blog

I recently attended From Start-up to Scale-up: a Like Minds event in Exeter.  And, despite the great and the good from the likes of LinkedIn, Lego and Amazon featuring as keynotes, I found myself more drawn towards the story of how a traditional law firm transformed its culture.

Now, law firms (like many industries and B2B, in particular) aren’t known for their storytelling and that’s more than enough reason to take a look at the talk from Robert Camp, managing partner at Stephens Scown in this video about transforming the culture of a traditional (and conservative) law firm.  Or rather, how they set out to destroy the culture of negativity and negative criticism that pervaded.

I’m hoping to interview Robert for the Nellie blog soon, but in the meantime, the video is really worth watching, as there are some great lessons and ideas for us all – whether you’re a start-up or undergoing a business culture transformation.

Here’s my notes from his session – a summary of the main takeaways:

• Importance of having engaged people that are proud of who they work for; proud of the people they work with; proud of their clients and proud of the quality of the work they send out
• How positive messages lift the business and the odd bit of colour too
• The power and hidden benefits of the little things such as positive postcards to help thank people
• Don’t be afraid to do a lot of cheese – in their case x two company choirs  
• Importance of community and campaigns such as #lovewhereyoulive
• Take inspiration from outside your sector to improve and champion great customer service. In the case of Stephens Scown, they took inspiration from Nordstrom and its legendary Nordy           stories to create Scowny stories.  I love the Scowny story of how they supported their own start-up clients by spreading the love of chocolate cake. With  Small Business Saturday coming up         – maybe you’ll be inspired to support your small business clients and suppliers too  
• Small steps over time make a massive difference – the journey isn’t a big bang.

For more information on Like Minds, both in Exeter and elsewhere, click here.