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Culture assessment to drive organisational change

Assessing your company culture is essential when driving organisational change because you need to understand where you’re starting from.

Building a Culture Plan

Organisational culture can sometimes seem a nebulous concept. While you can clearly feel culture and its impacts, defining what needs to

How to Develop your Risk Culture & Master Risk Management

As economic and reputational pressures on companies grow, the ability to master risk is becoming a critical and differentiating skill. In

Culture Lab: Assessing talent for cultural contribution

We’re excited to announce an exclusive Culture Lab Masterclass event on ‘Assessing talent for culture contribution’ that Walking the Talk

How to refresh your company values

Do you feel your company values may not fully represent who you are any more and therefore need updating? If so, you’re not the only one.

How does the Taylor Assessment work?

The Taylor Assessment is based on six culture archetypes: Achievement, One-Team, Innovation, Customer-Centric, People-First, and

Video: Refreshing Values

Do you feel your company values may not fully represent who you are anymore and therefore need updating? Watch Liz Stanley & Jerome

How to Balance a Culture of Wellness with High Performance

Business performance and employee wellbeing are often pitted as conflicting with each other. However, far from being mutually exclusive,

What makes The Taylor Assessment unique?

Why did we invest in designing the Taylor Assessment for the market? What makes it unique, and why we are excited about the value it can

Why hiring for culture contribution is so important

We have already looked at what The Taylor Assessment is and how it helps with hiring for culture contribution. In this blog we’re going to

Measuring Culture Contribution – Introducing The Taylor Assessment

If you know building the right culture is important for your future business successes, then you know that you need leaders who will

Amanda Fajak featured on the Leading Voices podcast

Amanda Fajak, CEO of Walking the Talk, and Larry Krema, Managing Director in the Real Estate Practice of ZRG, recently discussed how to

Why do so many culture transformations fail?

Transformation is a significant change in form and function that is irreversible and sustainable, for example turning coal into diamonds.

Amanda Fajak featured in Authority Magazine

Walking the Talk CEO Amanda Fajak recently shared with Authority Magazine her thoughts on the challenges of remote working and tips for

You can’t deliver strategy without a supporting culture

At Walking the Talk, we believe that culture is comprised of systems, symbols, and behaviours that are encouraged, discouraged, and

How to strike the right balance on empowerment

Empowerment is a cultural challenge that we hear from many of our clients. As a leader it can be tricky to find the right balance between

Your role as a leader in culture change

We’ve talked in a previous article about the importance of the leadership shadow on culture change. But we often find leaders don’t

Why humility is a key leadership trait

Leaders often believe they have to have all the answers. They feel they must live up to the expectation of being the smartest person in

Why you need to reassess your organisational values

The values of an organisation are not the words on its website or the posters on its walls. They are the day-to-day behaviours, systems,

Increasing trust to drive high performance

The foundation of any successful team, and organisation for that matter, is trust. In a hybrid working world, it is more important than

The Risks of Forcing People Back into the Office: Push Vs Pull

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly transformed the way we work, with remote work becoming the new norm for many professionals around

Simple starters for leaders in building an inclusive culture

In our last blog, ‘How to build an inclusive culture’ we looked at the role of behaviours, systems, and symbols in building an inclusive

Navigating the Return to the Office: The Impact on Inclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a seismic shift in the way we work, with remote work becoming the new norm for millions of people

How can you build an inclusive culture?

You may be thinking that building an inclusive culture is a huge task, and you don’t know where to start. The key is to focus on the

Return to the Office: Finding Balance in a Post-Pandemic World

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our lives were dramatically reshaped as we adapted to remote work. Zoom meetings, virtual collaboration, and

Why is a culture of inclusion so important?

Here we unpack why it’s so important for companies, and the business benefits it will bring to your organisation.

Video: What behaviours drive inclusive cultures?

Watch Walking the Talk's Mairi Doyle talk about what behaviours drive inclusive cultures.

What is an inclusive culture?

Inclusion is rightly a hot topic for organisations looking to change their culture and improve performance. Many companies understand the

Video: What symbols are important for inclusive cultures?

Watch Walking the Talk's Mairi Doyle talk about what symbols are important for inclusive cultures.

White Paper: Shaping a culture of inclusion

Walking the Talk is delighted to announce the release of our 2023 white paper on 'Shaping a culture of inclusion'. One of the hottest

Why you need to challenge the idea of perfectionism

Is the pursuit of perfectionism holding your organisation back? In our fast and frenetic world, the default position of many people is

The importance of the tipping point in culture change

For culture change to gain momentum and stick, a tipping point needs to be reached. This threshold can be lower than organisations think,

Video: Symbolic messages

Watch Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens talk about the importance of symbolic messages in company culture.

Agile cultures: Start small and build momentum

Despite our human craving for stability, the world is only becoming more uncertain (52% of companies on the Fortune 500 since 2000 have

Arqiva Case Study

Watch Amanda Fajak in conversation with Shuja Khan (CEO, Arqiva), Sarah Jane Crabtree (Chief People Officer, Arqiva) and Dominic Biles

The secret for changing your culture fast - Focus, focus, focus

Prioritisation: We all know the benefits. We all know we should do it. We all know how hard it is. The basic principle behind the power of

Culture Recruiting Report

We are pleased to announce that Walking the Talk have partnered with Hunt Scanlon Media for their 2023 Culture Recruiting Report.

Why you need to highlight values during a crisis

The true test of an organisation’s values comes when you’re under crisis. Whether that be a financial, reputational, or some other risk,

Client case study webinar: Arqiva

Join us on Wednesday, April 26th at GMT 15.00 / CET 16.00 / EST 11.00 for a special webinar. Amanda Fajak, Executive Director of Walking

The importance the shadow of a leader has on culture change

At Walking the Talk, we believe culture is created through the unspoken messages people receive, through behaviours of others , key systems

Does company culture affect employee motivation? No - and yes

No Elements that are more likely to directly impact employee motivation are short-term factors such as pay, working conditions, work-life

Agility is the key to success in this BANI world

We’d just about got used to being in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world when a new acronym popped up – BANI (Brittle,

In culture as in health: a good diagnosis matters

Would you trust a doctor who wanted to treat your stomach ache without understanding what was causing it? I know I wouldn’t. A good

Digital transformation and Customer-centricity: Chicken or egg?

Client: "We need to assess our digital maturity."Me: "Why?"Client: "As you know from our strategy, we must become more customer-centric if

Why you need to build a language of accountability in your organisation

Accountability is the ability of one person or group to deliver to the expectations of the other. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? In reality,

Successful culture change starts at the top

As human beings, we are programmed to try and fit in. In the corporate world, this means we take cues from our leaders as to what is

Edgar Schein (1928 – 2023)

Walking the Talk is saddened to hear of the recent passing of Edgar Schien, a true pioneer and inspirational colleague in the field of

Amanda Fajak named in list of Top 50 women leaders

We are proud to announce that Amanda Fajak, Walking the Talk's President of North America, was recently included in Women We Admire's list

Carolyn Taylor to deliver keynote at New York culture conference

We are pleased to announce that Walking the Talk's founder Carolyn Taylor will be the keynote speaker at Hunt Scanlon's forthcoming

Video: ANDRITZ's culture change journey

Watch Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens in conversation with ANDRITZ's culture team on how they defined and embedded a culture of

Dubai Culture Clinics

Carolyn Taylor, Founder and Chairperson of Walking the Talk, recently hosted two exclusive Culture Clinics at ZRG’s new office at the

Webinar: ANDRITZ's culture change journey

Join us on Wednesday, November 16th at GMT 12.00 / CET 13.00 / EST 07.00 for a special webinar when Jerome Parisse-Brassens, Executive

How the pandemic brought questions about purpose at work

In the new corporate scenario, employees must develop a sense of obligation and care about their colleagues and customers so as not to

Podcast: Recruiting & Promoting

Who you choose to fill an empty role sends such a strong message about what you truly value. In the latest Walking Your Talk Podcast,

Podcast: How to measure culture

As a special guest on The Lunchtime Series podcast, Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens discusses the need to understand culture,

The language of accountability

Language is a powerful lever that can be used to transform culture. One could argue that I have built this belief as a trained linguist,

Be-ing agile eats do-ing agile for breakfast

Drucker famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, by which he meant that you can have the best strategy in the world but

Video: Achieving measurable outcomes through culture and strategy

Watch Cora Béghin, Vice President of Learning and Development at Sage, discuss how with Walking the Talk Sage were able to identify key

Video: Culture Conversations - Hybrid Working Environments

In this episode of ZRG's Culture Conversations, Amanda Fajak discusses the role of hybrid work arrangements on company culture in

Video: Limiting self-beliefs

Walking the Talk's Mairi Doyle explains the limits of self-beliefs and the effects they have.

The power of beliefs

Last week I read a book that simultaneously amazed and reassured me. It reassured me because it confirms a major foundation of our work on

Identifying your limiting beliefs

I have been doing some work with clients on limiting beliefs – it is such an interesting topic and I personally think it is so powerful

Podcast: The Lunchtime Series

Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens is the special guest on the latest episode of The Lunchtime Series podcast, where he talks

Culture Conversations: Executive Coaching

Watch Walking the TalkExecutive Director Dr Liz Stanley discuss the pros and cons of executive coaching with Mary Kier, Global

Carolyn Taylor to deliver keynote on culture in New York

We are pleased to announce that Walking the Talk's Carolyn Taylor will be one of the keynote speakers at Hunt Scanlon's forthcoming

Video: Culture Conversation - Hybrid Working

Walking the Talk's Amanda Fajak talks about recruiting and onboarding in the hybrid world with ZRG's Mina Ames.

Podcast: How to anchor an agile culture (German audio only)

Walking the Talk's Bjoern Johannsmeier was a recent guest on the Astellas Pharma Deutschland - Changing Tomorrow podcast, discussing 'How

Video: The importance of symbols in a hybrid environment

Jerome Parisse-Brassens discusses the importance of symbols in a hybrid environment.

Managing culture in a hybrid world

Walking the Talk is excited to announce the release of our 2021 white paper on managing culture in a hybrid environment, the latest in our

Video: Carolyn Taylor & Liz Stanley discuss Accountability

We are delighted to announce that Carolyn Taylor's new book, Accountability@work: How to Make and Keep Promises and Have Others Do the Same

A new look and feel for Walking the Talk

Today we launched a new brand look and feel for Walking the Talk.

Podcast: Pursuit of excellence series

Pursuing excellence should be such a natural thing to do with a team of people, and yet it can be remarkably elusive amongst the anxieties,

Video: Astro's Culture Journey

Watch Walking the Talk's Amanda Fajak in conversation with Gavin Baxter, Astro’s Human Resources Director. Amanda and Gavin discuss Astro’s

The AI supportive mindsets and patterns of behaviour (Video)

Businesses that pay early attention to encouraging the mindsets and patterns of behaviour that support AI adoption will have improved

Exploding digitally enabled technologies – Survive? Thrive?

C-Suite CHRO recently discussed, as pandemic year of 2020 nears to end, how they fared with exploding digitally-enabled technologies. Did

Podcast: Special Edition - Paula Harraca, ArcelorMittal

In this episode of the Walking Your Talk podcast, special guest Paula Harraca, Head of People & Innovation at Arcelor Mittal Long in

How has your organisation’s purpose shifted in 2020?

How has your organisation’s purpose shifted or changed in the pandemic year of 2020, that saw an exponential rise of digitalisation at

What is the purpose of the physical workplace in 2021?

What is the purpose of the “physical workplace experience in 2021 and beyond? Here is what Australia’s C Suite CHRO’s think.

The 3 key 'must-haves' for faster digital transformation

Walking the Talk's Lorraine Farah explains what Australia’s C-Suite CHRO’s see as the 3 key 'must-haves' as they move faster towards

Podcast: Cultural readiness for the AI transformations

Walking the Talk's Amanda Fajak recently joined Matt Adler on the Recruiting Future podcast to discuss some of the findings from our recent

A root cause of significant cultural resistance

Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens explains that a root cause of significant cultural resistance is managers and employees using

Podcast: Prioritisation Series

The latest episode of Carolyn Taylor's Walking Your Talk Podcast on Prioritisation is now available on all podcast channels.

In an AI world transparency increases

In this video, Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens why in an AI world transparency increases because barriers are brought down and

In an AI-empowered world, maintaining control is even harder

Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens explains why in an AI-empowered world, maintaining control is going to be even harder because

The significant shift we are seeing in culture today (Video)

The significant shift we are seeing in culture today is not a shift away from a focus on achievement and results – this has to remain

Humans need to be at the centre of ai (Video)

In this video, Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens shares one of the key findings from our 2020 research report ‘Is your culture

Why is your digital transformation stalling?

In this video, Walking the Talk's Amanda Fajak explains why organisations can find that their digital transformations are stalling.

Is your business culture AI ready? (Video)

In this video, Walking the Talk's Jerome Parisse-Brassens shares some of the key findings from our 2020 research report ‘Is your culture

Matching words and deeds

Read Walking the Talk's founder Carolyn Taylor and Executive Director Amanda Fajak recent interview with Implenia's Employee Magazine

Patterns of an agile culture

There are four distinctive patterns of behaviour of an agile culture – customer-centricity, self-direction, experimentation and

Cracking the agile code

There’s a big difference between implementing an Agile process and having an agile culture.Watch our video to help crack the agile code.

How to influence your culture (positively)

Carolyn Taylor, Walking the Talk's Founder and Executive Chair, recently shared some inspirational ideas at the IWFM Conference in London.

What are the key shifts to create an agile culture?

Creating an agile culture involves fundamentally rethinking how you run your organisation and most organisations that we spoke to in our

Download Research Report on Agile Culture

Walking the Talk is excited to announce the release of our 2019 research report on agile culture.

The difference of being 'Above or below the line'

When things start to go wrong, it's natural for us to react. But in every situation, there is an external and a controllable driver - we

Carolyn Taylor on keeping things simple

Does your organisation suffer from over complexity? Learn about how a leader's approach to simplicity can change things.

Carolyn Taylor on Fear of Failure

Learn how to remove fear of failure from yourself and your organisation.

Can a speak up culture prevent business issues?

In the wake of the Royal Commission and its investigation of banks, financial services and now disability and aged care organisations in

How do you build a foundation of trust?

Walking the Talk Executive Director Amanda Fajak explains how you build a foundation of trust.

Jerome Parisse-Brassens asks "What are you measuring?"

Transforming an organisation's corporate culture can seem as a difficult task, so it's important to know what it is you're measuring

Four key factors for achieving culture results fast

We all know that changing an organisation’s culture is a long-term game, but a common challenge we hear from clients is how to demonstrate

What are organisational culture archetypes?

There are six cultural archetypes that can be found in every organisation. What are those archetypes, and what roles do they play in

What are the traps to avoid when creating an agile culture?

Are you looking to create an agile culture for your organisation? Walking the Talk Executive Director Amanda Fajak explains 3 things to

How to develop your leaders as role models

We’re pleased to invite you to watch highlights of our recent webinar to learn more about leading culture. Watch Amanda Fajak, Jerome

Carolyn Taylors talks Engagement

Learn why the relationship between culture and engagement is so important.

Developing leaders as powerful agents of change

The influence of leaders on organisational culture is strong. The shadow that leaders cast into their organisations means that the beliefs

The key shifts you need to create an agile culture

Discover the six key shifts your organisation needs to make in order to move towards an agile culture. {% video_player "embed_player"

What does working at the B-level mean?

Learn more about the people responsible for communicating problems and recommendations to the next level of management.

Video: The difference between culture and engagement

Executive Director Amanda Fajak explains why you shouldn't get culture confused with engagement.

What are the key elements for a culture plan?

What are the key elements that you need to think about when building your culture plan? Walking the Talk Executive Director Jerome

Video: What tools can you use to assess culture?

Choosing an efficient tool depends on why you want to assess your culture - Jerome Parisse-Brassens discusses two core tools involved in

Using a survey to describe your culture

Executive Director Jerome Parisse-Brassens explains why a behavioural tool such as a survey is useful for describing your company's culture.

Why assessing culture is critical

Executive Director Jerome Parisse-Brassens delves deeper into one of the first steps of the culture transformation process. {%

How Walking the Talk's tools can assess your culture

Jerome Parisse-Brassens explores how two main tools are efficient for assessing your company's culture.

Understand why your culture is the way it is

Learn why having a methodology that is qualitative is crucial for understanding your organisation's culture.

Creating an agile culture

Agile culture is about continually finding ways to improve your organisation's approach. Walking the Talk Executive Director Amanda Fajak

How to use Company Culture Assessment Tools

Corporate culture has now become one of the key pillars on the transformation agenda of most businesses. This is because many organisations

Cognitive and emotional cultures

Cognitive and emotional cultures I often get asked about the difference between cognitive and emotional cultures. Here is my take on it.

Watch Carolyn Taylor explain the importance of Empowerment

Empowering individuals to create the desired outcomes can positively impact the bottom line.Watch Walking the Talk Founder and Executive

The difference between influence and hierarchy

Executive Director Amanda Fajak explains why a formal hierarchy doesn't always equal influence.

MUFG Culture Transformation Case Study

Walking the Talk recently hosted a Culture Clinic in London, where Angus MacGregor, HR Head in EMEA and Securities Internationally at our

How do you define culture and change it?

Learn about Walking the Talk's working definition of culture, and how, by using this definition, you can make culture do-able.

How long does it really take to change your culture?

I have been on a pilgrimage of sorts over the past few weeks, retracing the events of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. My father was a

How to build a culture plan from scratch

Building a culture plan sits at the core of how you transform organisational cultures. Without a plan, it’s like shooting in the dark: you

How to refresh your organisation's culture efforts

"Refresh"Yesterday I had a conversation with an OD manager who used this word to describe his organisation"s goal in relation to their

The crisis legacy in organisational culture

This article appears in and is reproduced with the permission of Brazil's leading financial newspaper Valor Econōmico, from the original

The role of measurement in culture and behaviour change

As the role of culture is better understood, everyone wants to measure and understand the impact of culture change and the behaviours that

Culture as a Management Practice

On February 27th Walking the Talk in Brazil hosted a breakfast session with Walking the Talk co-founder and Executive Chair Carolyn

Letting go of power is not easy

I was only a teenager when I first read the question ‘what would I do if I weren’t afraid’. I was young and uncertain with all the angst of

How to build a business case for culture

Culture is a word that is on everyone’s lips at the moment, but often not for the right reasons; such as when a well-known brand was found

The 5 key ingredients of successful culture change

If changing your culture were as simple as waving a magic wand, the world would be full of perfectly run organisations with ecstatic

How to Accelerate Culture Change Across the Organisation

One of the most commonly asked questions in my work on culture is how long will the change take? When will we have the culture we need?

How to discover the corporate culture of your next employer

It’s happened to many of us: we go through a recruitment process, have one or several interviews, ask about the organisation and work

The CFO: Your secret weapon for culture change

HR has always appeared to be the natural home for the mechanics of leading culture change. In recent years, however, I’ve observed another

The art of positive role modelling

If you are a parent, you know that it is important to be a role model for your children, meaning that you need to behave in the same way

Behaviours in the Workplace: Where does responsibility lie?

Our Managing Behaviours in the Workplace research report is now available to download. Based on original research with over 700 leaders,

What does it take to out-think the competition?

Every day, faced with the same sets of data about their external environment, competitors make different decisions. These decisions will

Culture Transformation: How to work out what’s in it for YOU

Most of the posts on our blog focus on the benefits for the corporation of investing in culture. This time let's think about ourselves and

Culture Change: Getting culture on the strategic agenda

The argument for culture to have a key position on the strategic agenda has never been more compelling.

Culture transformation: Can we really change habits at work?

Growing new habits and forming new behaviours isn’t easy, and often requires support.

Culture change: The importance of being hopeful

The new year hasn’t been quite as fresh and refreshing as it usually is. Watching what is taking place in global politics has given me a

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