Thank you to everyone who came to the two organisation culture meetings last week.  It was good to have Alan Palmer on Wednesday and Simon Maindonald on Thursday joining us from Capital Works and sharing what’s happening in their areas.  We did a recap on what’s been happening over the past year since completing the surveys on our organisational culture, reflecting on the survey results and culture canvas activities in Library teams.

The second half of the session involved a brainstorming activity.  Each group voted on one causal factor to work on from the list of top causal factors identified by Library staff.  The Wednesday session chose Upward Communication (how effectively information is sent upward from employees to people in higher-level positions) and the Thursday session chose Employee Involvement (the extent to which we all participate in shaping the organisation and in helping it to achieve its mission).

The brainstorm activity tasked two groups in each session with generating 40 ideas in 15 minutes!  184 ideas were generated across both sessions which was a great effort!

The top ideas generated were (with vote numbers in brackets):

Upward Communication

• Communication training.  Listening skills (5)
• Myers Briggs for understanding (4)
• Communication for learning.  2-way conversations (3)
• Have monthly brainstorming meetings open to all staff (3)
• Innovation awards for best ideas (3)
• Communication more communal, less linear (3)
• Honest responses (2)
• Post-it notes on manager’s door (2)
• Managers morning tea with staff, 2 monthly (2)
• Voting board for ideas (online or physical) (2)
• More social meetings (2)
• No email Fridays (2)

Employee involvement

• Managers do a frontline shift (5)
• 30 minute meetings (4)
• Passion project (4)
• Feedback to staff what happens to their ideas (3)
• Non-managers create the operational plan (2)
• Online discussion forum for library issues (2)
• Fun Fridays (2)
• Create innovation forums for new ideas (2)
• Don’t just have solutions from the team involved in the problem (2)
• Job swaps (2)

We encourage you to further discuss the ideas raised in your team meetings. If you or your team sees something you can start doing now, we encourage you to just go for it – and to share your experience!  We’re also looking at ideas we could implement now and will report on this shortly.

Feedback is also welcome to any of us on the two LR project teams (Stuart, Richard, Bronwyn, Caroline A and Tim).