Culture Club…
I’ll be honest, I’ve crowbarred that title in.
As 50 Degrees’ Mobilisation Lead, I have written a lot of mobilisation responses and created a similar number of mobilisation plans. I shared my thoughts on the challenges of writing mobilisation responses in this rather self-importantly titled Blog: Optimistic storytelling or pragmatic realism?
For those who think reading two mobilisation Blogs in one day is a bit much (fair enough!) the gist of the Blog was that the purpose of a mobilisation response is to demonstrate how the super-intuitive solution/delivery model will work in the real world. Ultimately, it’s about showing how the solution will be implemented in time, within budget and without disrupting services for the service user.
And that means I answer a fair amount of ‘black and white’ questions, writing about governance, risk management, reporting, and managing interdependencies.
Increasingly, however, awarding Authorities are asking questions about culture… for example… ‘describe the culture the Operator will create, and the actions taken to support its development’.
It’s a sensible question.
If the purpose of a mobilisation response is to ‘demonstrate how the solution will work in the real world’, then it makes sense that the Authority expects a clear description of how the culture surrounding a service will be created (and maintained) to support its delivery. Afterall, however clever or innovative a solution is, it’s just not going to work if there’s problems with the culture… common sense suggests that service users won’t engage with the service, or certainly won’t get the best out of it, in these circumstances.
At face value, writing about culture in a mobilisation response presents a very different challenge. Culture doesn’t really fit in the same neat box as reporting schedules or ISO 44001 stakeholder management frameworks. It’s more difficult to describe and can feel much more subjective than most elements of a mobilisation response.
Here a few of our bid writing strategies for describing culture development effectively.
Remember it’s a mobilisation response: The basics still apply, so it needs to be clear in your response, who is accountable for the development of culture, what the objective and milestones are, and there needs to be a defined series of achievable actions that underpin this.
Show who (and how) you going to engage : Most mobilisation work is founded on collaboration – with the Authority, with stakeholders, with staff, with service users. Culture development is no different. Describe the practical approaches you will take to engage with people and groups effectively, and how you will communicate with them… and let them communicate with you.
It’s about people: Make clear how culture will be integrated into your recruitment strategy – what are the practical things that will be done to make sure the right people are recruited? And this applies to the people leading the mobilisation, as much as the people who will manage the service when it’s up and running
Onboarding and training: Describe how you will make sure new staff understand what the culture is. This needs to be clearly built into your onboarding timeline, and pre-deployment training planning.
I’m aware there’s a lot more to it than that… we are in scratching the surface territory.
The point I am labouring is that it is possible to describe practical actions that can support the creation of culture. That it is possible to develop a Mobilisation Plan for culture, even if it does feel far less binary than a risk management reporting framework.
And finally… it’s important to make sure that your response doesn’t feel like a tick box exercise that stops when the mobilisation period ends. Culture development cannot be seen to take a back seat, as people are increasingly busy with the ‘day to day’. Our final recommendation:
Continuity is critical: It’s paramount to set out a set of actions, and action owners, that clearly describe how culture will continue to be monitored, developed and nurtured when the hand over to business as usual happens. Who, how, when? All questions that mobilisation responses really should be answering!
John Ashworth
Managing Consultant