For me, change always starts from within.
Hello, I'm Neil Perkin, the host of Think with Google Firestarters.And Firestarters is a series of insightful conversations with the interested and the interesting of the marketing, innovation, and transformation communities.
And I've long wanted to tackle the subject of cultural transformation and change within organizations on Firestarters.And today, I'm lucky enough to be speaking with the perfect person to speak to this.So Tanya Evans.
Tanya Evans is Group Culture and Leadership Director at Lloyds Banking Group.
and prior to this she was also the the Group People Development Director at Legal & General, Global Learning and Leadership Director at Aviva and has also worked as Director at Innovation Consultancy What If.
So full disclosure I've worked with Tanya on a range of culture and leadership projects over the last few years or so but Tanya welcome to Firestarters, perhaps if you could just give us a bit more on your role and what you're currently up to at Lloyds and also give us of course your provocation for the Firestarters audience.
Great, and thank you, Neil.And thanks so much for inviting me on, on your podcast.It's brilliant to be here.
And, yeah, I guess I joined Lloyds Banking Group about 18 months ago, and we're on a really major transformation in helping the organization develop a high-performance culture. for the future.
And actually, you know, we're really hopeful this is a transformation that is not just for Lloyds Banking Group, but actually is going to be disruptive for the whole industry.
So it's really, really exciting to be part of the Lloyds change and transformation journey right now.
But I guess interestingly, and this may seem different for some people than that they would expect me to say, but in the role that I have, but for me, change always starts from within. And the world actually almost never changes.
It's really your response to it that changes.And that's how change evolves.
So that's a really interesting lens, I think, on transformation and change.And you say change sort of starts from within, and really the critical thing here is the choices you make about how you respond to that change.
So tell me a bit more about that.
I think having been part of change and transformation journeys pretty much my whole career, really, for all sorts of different industries, everything from supply chain transformations for De Beers in Botswana to IT system implementations like the network rail and everything in between, really.
For me, I think it's always about, as leaders, we have to look within ourselves first and understand the choices that we're making in order to have impact on the world outside.
And complex systems are really difficult to change, partly because actually they are working for somebody.So they're working for people in one way, shape or form.So therefore, there is always going to be resistance to change.
And change is really difficult and quite often fear-inducing for people.So we have to really think about our own responses in order to adapt to the world around us.And I think often we don't always
As leaders put enough effort into finding the why for everyone, it's really easy for senior leaders to be really thoughtful and passionate about their strategy, their thinking about the future, their own vision.
But it doesn't always resonate with all the stakeholders involved in complex change and transformation journeys.So we've really got to work hard to find the whippings, as we used to call it in the consulting world, the what's-in-it-for-me's.
And particularly now, I'm sure your viewers will all be thoughtful about the attention economy or attention economics.And we're all fighting for attention in these worlds.So we have to make it relevant for people.
if we've got any hope of bringing them along along the journey with us and making it meaningful for them.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense.So I mean tell me a bit more in the kind of Lloyd's context about the journey that you're going on and what your ambitions are around the kind of culture and performance at Lloyd's.
Microsoft have a culture change transformation of systems, behaviours, storytelling and symbols.So we've mapped our culture change across those four levers.What we've also done is really be thoughtful about how we're measuring culture change.
So we've developed a culture dashboard and it has three pillars really so that we can see whether the changes we're making are actually having meaningful and tangible positive impacts on our customers, because that's the real end state.
We have to be doing things to help us deliver better customer outcomes faster.So our culture change dashboard really is looking at, like I say, three pillars.
One is around high performance, because we're looking to really help the organization deliver high performance through a coaching culture, actually. The second lever is around change readiness.
So again, to the points I was making before about how difficult change is. And particularly large organizations that have been around for as long as lawyers have, there's quite often a lot of change resistance within the system.
So we're using metrics and measures to really look at that change resistance and how we're developing and helping people become more used to change and more agile with change.And then the final pillar is that customer outcomes piece.Are we having
positive outcomes on the customers that we serve in all of the different ways that we serve them.So we're looking to track that over time.And I think it's really interesting work that we're doing in that space.And at the moment,
We're seeing that we are making some really difficult changes in Lloyds and lots of difficult decisions that we're having to make to help us be relevant for the future and relevant in service of our customers, but we're seeing some really positive early signs on customer outcomes.
Brilliant.I'm going to come back to that idea of measurement, actually, if I may, a bit later.But just to dive back into that sort of model that you mentioned there about behavior systems, storytelling, symbols.
So tell us a bit more about what each of those things mean and what's the change you're looking to drive in each of those areas.
Well, so we have, we have some, we've set out some culture shifts, so some things that we really want to see people delivering in a different way, the mindset shift that we're really looking to see.
So Charlie Nunn, our CEO, is really passionate about growth mindsets. So it's very much anchored in creating a learning culture and a coaching culture in the organization.
As some of our shifts are, we really are looking for people to move from me to we in their thinking.We're looking for people to move from a process-driven mindset and behaviors to a customer-driven mindset and behaviors.
So we're building through really pragmatic tools and techniques that will help people do that.
So, for example, in the systems space, one of our classic systems that is really difficult to unpick, particularly in regulated organisations, is our attitude to risk. and our risk appetite, so that's a real key system.
I think people often think when you say systems, they think of IT systems, but I'm talking about organisational systems that we can change, the way things happen here.
Finance and budgeting is another key system that we can change and we can adapt so that we build accountability into people and that they feel ownership and accountable for the choices that they're making rather than done to.
I think particularly, again, in big organizations, it's really easy to end up unintentionally in a parent-child kind of dynamic that is not really what we want in a modern world and doesn't really release people to deliver what I like to try and do, which is help people do more than they thought possible.
But you need to create the right environment for people to be able to do that. you know, we're really thoughtful about the stories that we are collecting and disseminating in the organization so people really understand what good looks like.
So we've fundamentally changed our approach to recognition so that we're really creating customer heroes out in the organization and helping people see that we really want them to
Think about the term, again, this is a Wits Carlton term, which is, you know, everyone either serves customers, or you serve someone who is serving customers.And we need to be thoughtful about that in the way that we're approaching this.
In the behavior space, you know, again, this is, it's about mindset and behaviors, really.It's about people really thinking about our values and bringing our values to life.So we have, we have a set of values.People first is one of them.
Being bold is another.You know, being really inclusive.You know, these are things that are really fundamental to us.So we're thoughtful about how do we embed those things?
through everything that we do, hardwiring it into the way that we make decisions.We've introduced a tool called Rapid, which is a Bain tool, which is a brilliant tool in helping create transparency and clarity in the roles around decision-making.
But we also want people to use our values to guide their decision-making as well.So it's about using those two things in conjunction with each other. And that's the kind of changes that we really want to see in the organisation.
And we're beginning to see, we do colleague surveys.So we have a survey that happens once a year that's coming up soon.And then we do pulse surveys on a sort of bi-quarterly basis.
And they're giving us really good insights and early indicators that the changes we're making are having a positive impact.
Right.It's interesting, as you were talking there, I was thinking about one of the most famous culture models, I think, which is Edgar Shine's kind of pyramid.
He's got like three layers to his pyramid, so he has like, you know, articulating basically what organizational culture is all about.The top is like artifacts, which are the, he calls them, which are like the kind of visible
organizational structures, processes, the things that you can see.And then underneath that is the values that you were talking about there, which might be strategies or philosophies or just ways of thinking about things.
But then underneath, right at the bottom there, he talks about assumptions.And these are the kind of like unconscious beliefs that might have grown up in the organization over time.
And arguably, they are much less visible, but probably harder to change because they're almost unconscious.They're the kind of things that just happen, aren't they?So any kind of techniques or advice about changing and unpacking assumptions?
How do you really get down to the fundamental ways in which people look at things and actually change those kind of beliefs that they might have about how things should happen?
Yeah, I mean, it's so fascinating and complex, isn't it?And this is what draws me to this space and always has done.You know, it's all about the human mind and how we interact with the world. And I guess there's a couple of things.
One is, I mean, I think the potential of AI to disrupt the world of culture transformation is phenomenal.
I think that there's a great economist, ecologist, sorry, called Frank Elgar from the early 19th century, who talked about how complex ecosystems in organizations and in nature are actually almost too difficult for us to understand.
that are too difficult to think about for us mortal human beings.And actually I think AI can really help us over time map the cause and effect of culture change and potential reactions from stakeholders.
Over time, that I think is a real unlock for us to use that AI capability.Now, the challenge with that is you've got to have good data for the AI to work.
So I think that is a constant challenge, particularly, again, in large organizations with a lot of legacy.But I think that system change is tricky because complex systems are super difficult to change because they are always working for somebody.
So when an organization is very opaque and people like myself come in and try and make them transparent, there's a resistance to that because the opaqueness of an organization means people can crack on with doing things in the way they've always liked doing them.
And it enables them to sit with their fear and push change away.Which I guess brings me to another point around what you've just said around the underlying
unintended consequences or intentions of people is, I think, if you think about different types of change agents that are in any transformation journey, in my kind of experience, you have three types of people.
You've got pioneers, you could call them, who are people who are coming in with
great ideas, lots of disruption, loads of energy and they may or may not really understand the systems that they're trying to change but they've got lots of energy and they've got lots of drive to come up with ideas and ways forward for the organisation.
You then, you've then got midfielders, let's call them.
So these are people who are up for the change, excited about it, but perhaps understand the system and how it operates a little better, and are able to translate some of the changes and ideas of the pioneers into things that can actually be absorbed by the organization.
And then you've probably got, or in my experience, you've got kind of mature players.And these are people who have perhaps been around for a while, or they certainly understand the system that they're operating in.
They're really good at stakeholder management.They're also very good at identifying what might work and what might not and navigating those changes.
And what's really important is to get those midfielders and those mature players working really, really well together so that it can make change stick.
And one way that we've tried to do that at Laurie's Banking Group is through our catalyst population.We've got 65,000 people.
And if you can get 10% of those people, say 6,500, spending 10% of their time on incremental and continuous improvement activities,
in service of the transformation and change that you're looking to deliver on, then that creates the right tipping point.And that's certainly been our experience to date.
We've mobilised, about 18 months ago, we mobilised 6,500 people across the organisation, at different levels in the organizations as catalysts.
We gave them some training on things like design thinking and radical candor, how you can challenge respectfully and challenge the status quo was really what we were asking them to do.Look at all the places,
in the organisation where we're not living up to our values, where we're not delivering on our cultural ambition and the shifts that we want to see, and help us identify those areas and do something about them.
Now, you know, it's having, in some areas, it's working way better than others.In some areas that they are really leaning into mindsets and behaviors, in others, they're leaning into system activity.
But what's brilliant to see is the energy across that group, across that population, that they, that they feel really accountable and a lot of ownership for the transformation journey we're on.
And I'm really thoughtful about how we keep that group really motivated and feeling that they've got this momentum and that they've got also backing from us to keep going.
Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating that.I think that I've seen that sort of idea sort of represented in different ways, like almost like a diffusion of innovation kind of curve, where you have your early adopters and then the early and late majority.
But the early and late majority don't do anything, they don't change anything until they see the early adopters doing it.So I guess what you're doing there is you're creating an audience or a
a community of early adopters, which actually then show rather than telling, don't they?They show the change happening rather than actually just saying, you've got to change, you've got to change your behaviour.
You've got people there exhibiting the change that you want to have happen.Is that really what you're after with that community?
Yeah, absolutely.I mean, you want to be, I say to my team a lot of the time, like, we need to be the change we want to see in the world.And then when you can really exhibit a different way of working, a different way of collaborating,
then you can be different and you can prove your proof points in the organization, aren't you, that change is positive.
Because so much change resistance comes from fear, fear of the unknown, fear of doing something different, fear of not getting it right.People hate being told that what they were doing needs to evolve because they often see that as a
a telling off, really, of what they were doing before.But that's absolutely not the way I see it.The way I see it is evolution is a fundamental piece of life, let alone organisations.To the point I made before about relevancy, we all have to
keep evolving to stay relevant.And, you know, Darwin is one of the most misquoted people of all time, because what he talks about wasn't survival of the fittest, but survival comes from adaptability.
People who survive are able to adapt to new ways, new things that happen.I think there's so many parallels of what happens in nature, of what happens in our organisations that we can really draw from more than we probably do at the moment.
Yeah and I think you mentioned earlier about values and how values can kind of guide decision making and one of the things that I was thinking about there is about how it can empower people with autonomy.
So I think Spotify call it aligned autonomy which is
the idea basically that if people have a good sense of what is a good decision in the organisational context and the values of the organisation and what the organisation is trying to do, that they can make smart decisions if they are empowered but also competent in making those decisions.
So is that really what you're after, greater levels of autonomy perhaps for people to try things out and for people to move faster and be more adaptive perhaps?
Absolutely.I mean, again, you know, risk is a challenge for us, because, you know, there's a lot of fear in regulated organizations that giving people autonomy means that they'll be overly risk-taking.
I think that's probably not our challenge right now is that we need to release people more and enable them to see that the right level of risk gets us to better outcomes.
And I guess one of the things that I think there is around the concept of feedback, you know, lots of people talk about feedback, but if you can really give good regular feedback about how people are behaving, making decisions, what they're doing,
to evolve in the right way.All the research will tell you that more people who get regular feedback are more engaged.In one study, 85% of people given regular feedback, they take more initiative.
73% of people are better at collaborating with regular feedback.So, you know, there's real statistics behind giving people autonomy and feedback can really help you deliver a much better, for us, customer outcomes.
And I always think, you know, I'm a bit of a sort of random quote generator at times, but one of my favorites is, if you have difficult conversations, you have easy life.
if you have easy conversations, you have a difficult life, because there's a ripple effect to every difficult conversation that you don't have.
And you know what, you know, if feedback's difficult to give, it's, well, if it's difficult to hear, it's been really difficult to give.So you should be really thoughtful about if someone's
bothered enough to give you some challenging feedback, you should give it the respect it deserves.And actually, it's by leaning into a feedback culture as well, it helps you get further faster.
And I guess part of that is psychological safety, isn't it?Which is completely the thing now.Lots of organizations focusing on how they can really catalyze psychological safety.
But for me, a key part of that, alongside trust, is the ability to disagree with each other in healthy ways, right?And to have that sort of healthy conflict that helps you to solve problems better. But that can be quite challenging, can't it?
Some people don't like conflict.They don't like disagreeing with each other.It's all about getting along.So how do you create the kind of culture where you can enable those kinds of healthy conversations and that healthy disagreement?
Absolutely.I mean, I think some of it is about helping people see and believe.So being able to see people having challenging conversations that don't, you know, result in you being fired or something terrible happening.
So I think, again, transparency is something that, you know, I strive for all the time, like, let's see people having and behaving in the ways that we want them to. see them.
I mean, we, we're doing some things around helping people really understand the concept of radical candor.
We're also helping our leaders in particular, but really all of our people, we're giving access to training in the space of challenging conversations.
And a lot of it is practice, you know, practicing having challenging conversations, because at its worst, you know, radical candor, challenging conversations can
just be horrible for people, but when it's done well, it's absolutely getting everyone into a better place.But you have to be willing to lean into those challenging conversations.And that's not easy, and it takes practice.
I think another thing, though, for me related to that space is it is joy.And what I mean by that is, how do we get leaders to really bring joy into the workplace?
Because it's, it's a really strong belief of mine that you can do hard things, and it can be fun at the same time.
And I think we forget too much, particularly in, you know, financial services organizations, in organizations where the work is very serious, to forget that by bringing joy, we help
you know, it's the oil, it oils the wheels of change and transformation and difficult conversations.And, and I'm a real believer that leaders are responsible for that.
You know, and some of that is also about being thoughtful about who you have in your team.
So, again, the research will tell you, you've got to be really thoughtful about who you've got in your team, how they're motivated, how you're motivating them as a leader.
and how you're acting on performance, both good and bad, because these things have a ripple effect.And teams who, teams who have great high-performing cultures, you know, they are able to deliver more.
And that doesn't mean that every single individual needs to be the highest performer in their field, but it means that they need to be working together and collaborating together and having fun together.I often say to my team, you know,
I take my work incredibly seriously.I really, really am thoughtful about what I do and the impact that I have.But I don't take myself very seriously at all, really.
And I want to bring a bit of fun and a bit of joy to all of our proceedings, even when times are tough.A smile goes a long way, even though that's easy to say.But equally, you know,
90% of people say a poor hiring decision have, has a negative impact on motivation.You know, 68% of people will say that low performers bring, bring the overall morale of the team down.So again, you know,
research will tell you, you only need to have two people in your team who you don't believe are high performers or have some kind of toxic behavior, and you've got really no hope of being a high-performing team.
So I think it's really important for leaders to, to appreciate that responsibility that they have and not walk past, not walk past bad behavior or underperformance.
Yeah, I love your point about joy, because it feels like sometimes change, transformation can be very serious, a very serious thing, right?
But it's interesting you talking there about, you know, about motivation and, you know, about joy in amongst, you know, sort of hard challenges, because often if you ask people to reflect on when they were most motivated in their careers, the time when they sort of felt like they were most productive or doing the best work they'd ever done,
is often in those really challenging situations where they had a big stretching target or they were launching something new or doing something for the first time because it's very motivating actually to be given responsibility and autonomy and to do that.
Your point about the right team, though, I'd like to just ask you a build question on that, which is about cognitive diversity as well.
Because one of the things I've been more interested in recently is about how cognitive diversity can help you to solve problems better.
And often that comes from, you know, combining maybe different disciplines or functions in the same team, or breaking down those kind of organizational silos, so you're able to share knowledge much better.
Is that something which you're really looking to do as part of this transformation process?
Yeah, absolutely.I mean, I think diversity is so critical, but for loads of different reasons.I mean, cognitive diversity, absolutely.You get that by really inviting and creating belonging for lots of different
individuals who come from different backgrounds and different social economic environments, different thinkers, people who have different abilities and capabilities.By bringing in a whole melting pot of things is where
you create serendipitous moments actually as well because, as you mentioned earlier that i used to work for SIF innovation, they wrote a book, the founders wrote a book called science of serendipity and it's because actually there's ways of creating
epiphanies and innovative thinking by being really scientific about who you bring together and how you bring them together and how you create these moments of unexpected outcomes really.
But we don't often think about diversity in that space or that's why it's so important.It's not just about being a good employer, or like, absolutely, we need to do more across the financial services sector.
And, you know, for my part in Lloyds Banking Group to support our diversity and equity and inclusion agenda, we have to, we have to create psychological safety, as you say, we have to create belonging. But equally, it's not just a leader's job.
It's absolutely a leader's job to do that.But it's everybody's job to do that.And one of the things we're doing here, actually, is resetting expectations of our colleagues as well as our line managers.You know, how do we expect you to behave here?
And, you know, back to our values, inclusion is one of our key values.
about creating inclusive environments where people feel that they can bring them all of themselves into the office, into the working conversations, and also that they feel an ability to challenge, because it's through challenging conversations to the conversation we had a minute ago.
Feeling that you are able to say, actually, I have a different point of view, I disagree with you, that is so important. But that means that we have to create an environment where everyone feels that they're able to do that.
And that means that we have to, you know, you have to look around you and be able to see people who are different to you, and who are the same to you, because both of those things are really helpful in creating the right environment.
Yeah, brilliant.And I'd like to bring us back, actually, to something you mentioned earlier on.We're running short on time, unfortunately.But one of my last questions really is around measurement, because this was such an interesting idea.
Because culture feels quite intangible, doesn't it?And so the idea of being able to measure, quite specifically, cultural change feels like quite a challenging thing to do.
So tell us a bit more about what you're measuring, and how you're measuring, and what that looks like.
So a big part of our measurement is through our listening, our colleague listening activities.
So I think I mentioned earlier that we do a colleague survey once a year, and then we have pulse surveys to keep temperature checking, really, what's happening, how it's happening.But we also do a lot of additional listening to our organization.
And we're getting better and better at creating the basis for people to do that. and to share their views with us.
And, you know, we're not always going to do what they tell us to do or they ask us to do, but it does give us a real sense of, well, how are things landing?How are things evolving?You know, how can we course correct?
And we've definitely needed to over the course of the time that I've been at Lloyds.You know, we've really been more thoughtful about how do we communicate better and through our senior leadership populations are cascading better.
so that people feel connected to the stories, connected to the changes and understand the changes.We're thoughtful about the customer outcomes that we're creating.
So are we actually getting better feedback from our customers about what we're delivering and how we're delivering it?Because that has a direct link to have we got the right people in the right places at the right time to do their best work.
But measurement is tricky, isn't it?And to some degree, you can kind of look at measurement and, you know, like with research, you can kind of get it to say anything you want it to say.
if you correlate the right bits of information in the right ways.But we are really thoughtful about doing that in a systematic way so that we're looking at lots of different data.We do things like sentiment scrape, glass jaw and things like that.
We're looking at how do we really map our organisation and the stakeholders and are line managers doing the things that they should be doing?And we're getting better and better at these things every day.Now, we're not where we want to be.
Data, as I think I mentioned earlier, is tricky, particularly in big organizations with lots of legacy systems.But each, you know, we're really passionate about moving from being data-led to insight and trend-led. And that work is ongoing.
And I'm really pleased that it's interesting.I don't think there are many organisations out there who are looking at culture measurement in the way that we're looking at it with these three pillars and really thinking about the customer outcome.
Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating.
I've got one final question for you, if I may, Tanya, which is actually, I mean, you've been at the centre of cultural change in a number of different organisations and led the cultural change in a number of different organisations.
So what is it that you actually get out of that personally?What really gets you out of bed in the morning and just gets you really enthusiastic for the job?
Oh, that's a tricky one. You know, I went into this whole kind of area, so I did a psychology degree.And psychology will tell you that, you know, better-engaged organizations, better-engaged people deliver better customer outcomes.
You know, I'm really personally thoughtful about how, how do you create brilliant experiences with people when they spend a heck of a lot of time at work?You know, I grew up with I was very lucky to grow up with a mixed race.
I was born to a mixed race couple.My mom's English, my dad's Hindu from Kolkata.They were both in the education system.
They absolutely loved their jobs, but they sort of didn't really like the things around it and really struggled in their jobs a lot.Didn't get the right support, I would say, a lot of the time.
And I grew up thinking, well, I think work can be better than that.I think it can be more meaningful.I think it can be more fun.
And, you know, I sort of like get out of bed every morning wanting to make, you know, it sounds trite, but wanting to make the world a better place a little bit and wanting people to be able to deliver more than they thought was possible is really important to me.
You know, we don't trust our brains enough.We've got an uber computer up here that we know very, very little about.
But, you know, if we trusted our intuition and if I can help get people to connect to themselves more and more, then I think, you know, we'll all be living in a better place.
And one of the ways to do that is there's a great book called Nature Fix, which talks about how, back to my psychology degree, we all know that people are happier when they are with people, communities of people.Nobody wants to be lonely.
It creates the awful well-being and mental health issues.
But actually, what some recent studies have shown is that people are at their happiest either with or without people, with other people, but they're at their happiest when they're in nature, away from urban environments, in the countryside.
But what I also find interesting about that stat, or that piece of research, is that we fundamentally underestimate how happy we will be in that environment.So we constantly make poor choices.
And we find ourselves, you know, gravitating to busy restaurants or to, you know, the city and et cetera, et cetera.I mean, I love going to London.I love my little London fixes.
But I have chosen to live in the countryside because I get so much joy from that.And, you know, it means I've got a long commute, but I love it.
But I guess back to your point, though, it's about helping people really think about, you know, to my point at the beginning, my provocation, you know, change starts from within.
and you have to look inside before you can possibly look outside but doing that is, and I get to do that sometimes a lot of the time in my job, is the impact I have on individuals because the ripple effect of that is really significant and I think we, I think Tolstoy says you know everyone wants to change the world but not enough of us think about changing ourselves and I think you know if we all thought about that a bit more I think the world would be a bit of a better place.
Brilliant.That's been super insightful, Tanya.So thank you so much for sharing your thinking with us today and for coming on Firestarters.If you enjoyed the episode, please do subscribe and don't forget to share the episode.
But my thanks once again to Tanya Evans for coming on Firestarters.Thank you, Tanya.
Thanks so much for having me.It's been fun.Cheers, Neil.
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