Corporate Punk

Background
Corporate Punk is an organisational performance practice helping businesses to create an ‘impact culture’ through fast, habitual change. The business recently worked with a major international media company to unleash the potential of its 300-strong R&D team, which had been siloed from other teams for years. Traditional remedies weren’t working, with each new attempt fostering further cynicism amongst the team.

"Creating an 'impact culture' through fast, habitual change"

Approach
Corporate Punk began by implementing the Creative Effectiveness Index (CEI) across the R&D department. Based on 40 years of academic work and research into organisational performance, CEI focuses on 9 factors of high-performing cultures through the lens of ‘creativity’—the ability to solve problems through fresh thinking. CEI is unique in that it quantifies and measures culture as opposed to proxies for culture; the criteria assessed are not often measured by traditional approaches; and the responses measured are non-conscious, thus psychologically valid. Data is collected through an image-based survey that is designed and analysed by psychologists. Corporate Punk also collected additional data delving into non-conscious associations with the brand, and employees’ experiences at work.

Outcome
The insight phase took under 6 weeks, and produced a detailed analysis on the psychological barriers to culture change. One major barrier to change for the client ended up being completely unanticipated: staff were too committed to the brand’s social role to consider change. A fear of failure borne of an unwillingness to be irreverent was another of the complex barriers found during the work, which would have been impossible to identify through traditional diagnostic methods.

The uncovered insights allowed the client to change the nature of internal discussions; plan and execute change strategies more efficiently; and develop a learning and development programme to enhance key skills and behaviours. Corporate Punk is now working with the client to track the developing culture as well as drive the change itself. Corporate Punk is on a mission to transform how businesses think and operate, using innovative organisational psychology to benchmark and measure culture.