Behaviours

In order to deliver the ambitions of the agency, the culture needs to be clear, strong and consciously nurtured.

This briefing includes some background reading to ensure board members have the same understanding and language about the desired behaviours, and an exercise and guided discussion to work through in the board meeting.

It's worth the board having this session a few times a year, and perhaps at least one of those as a longer session at a retreat. That allows different behaviours to be reviewed at different times, and continuous progress to be evaluated and adjusted.

Objectives

The objective of this review of the agency’s behaviours is to take a step back from the day-to-day of the business and take a look at how the agency demonstrates its stated behaviours in everything it does. The review will also help to provide some friendly challenge to the agency on areas where it is not demonstrating these behaviours clearly, or is even acting in an opposite way.

The board's role is to provide a different perspective on the agency, acting as a forum for challenging questions and debate. Even if the board is only people who also have executive roles in the agency, there is still benefit in stepping into the different mindset of being a board.

It’s not the board’s role to change the agency’s stated behaviours. The board's task is to help the agency measure itself against them, by providing a wider perspective.

The board should act as a trusted friend, challenging the agency with frank and honest feedback to help it improve. There’s no value in acting like a grandparent that just thinks everything it does is perfect. Actively look for what can be improved to make the agency better.

Pre-reading

Behaviours are the foundation of an agency, more so than any other type of business. That’s because agencies are purely about people — providing clients with the knowledge, skills and time of the team. Therefore, how every member of the agency behaves with each other, with clients, or in your communities is the agency.

Some organisations refer to these behaviours as the ‘values’ of the organisation, but there is merit to being more practically action-focused. These aren’t just things to pin to the wall as a management exercise, as values are often seen to be. This is a clear statement about how everyone in the agency wants to behave, and be seen to behave, day after day. These are the agency’s desired behaviours.

(If your agency has defined values, not behaviours, that's okay. You don't have to redefine them to do this exercise. Just read each reference to behaviours here as a reference to values.)

An agency will typically have around 5ish desired behaviours. Too many more and they’re meaningless. Too few and it’s not enough of a definition.

Each behaviour can be stated in one or two words, with a few sentences to illustrate what it means in practice.

The behaviours and their descriptions should be roughly 75% a real reflection of the way the agency is, so that people know what to expect, and 25% aspiration of how the agency could be, to help direct the agency towards a better future.

The stated behaviours of your agency should be: