8 Changing the culture

In late 2011, the Prostate Cancer Charity was set in its ways and, although respected, was punching below its weight in terms of effectiveness. The charity knew it needed radical change and had appointed a new CEO and its first director of communications. It had ambitious targets for growth and a much higher public profile. In particular, it wanted to reach a more diverse range of men.

The board committed to a project led by Seamus O’Farrell, the charity’s director of marketing and communications, titled ‘We, the Brand’.

The brand was ostensibly the focus but many knew this also meant serious organisational and cultural change. Paul Feldwick was working with Seamus as brand and organisational consultant. He brought us into the team early in the brand redevelopment and we kicked off the process by examining forensically the language the charity used every day, both internally and externally.

We dissected documents, spoke to people as they worked, listened to helpline calls, lurked in meetings and peered at notices on walls. We put all this language through rigorous analysis, looking for patterns and clues. The charity is deeply committed to science, knowledge and evidence, and this systematic approach made sense to them.

When we had, as one of them put it, ‘fed us through the X-ray machine’, we shared the results initially with a large group – 50 or so people in one room, from all areas and levels, including the charity’s agencies and everyone helping with the rebranding process.

The charity’s language showed some subtle but persistent features. Here are just some of them. There was habitual indirectness and distancing in language, and a marked use of euphemism and hyper-politeness. The density of text – enormously long reports, minutes, even newsletters and information sheets – was striking. There was medical and NHS language where you would expect it, but also often where you would not.

While there were occasional bursts of outrage (at the plight of men with the disease) and fighting talk, especially by individuals in conversation, this was submerged. We characterised it as a ‘muffled’ discourse – soft, quiet, civilised and caring – but muffled. In fact, the office interior and brand identity (inasmuch as one existed) echoed this – nursing blue and white, rather bland and eerily calm.

From micro examination of verb forms, we could see the charity tended always to position itself as acting outwards, on other people or things, while not (at least linguistically) allowing the possibility of other parties acting on it from the outside. This observation, as for others, produced a ripple of recognition – it articulated a habit or attitude that felt familiar. Theirs was, they recognised, a ‘very British, middle-class, educated, expert and somewhat paternalistic’ discourse.

Let’s be clear: an organisation’s current culture, the one that’s holding it back, was once fully adapted to the strategic and market conditions of the time, and to the leadership that shaped it. It must have been, or the organisation wouldn’t have survived or been successful. Some elements may still be valuable. But the culture now contains attitudes, implied relationships and world views that are outgrown or outdated.

And this is what had happened to the Prostate Cancer Charity. Things that had helped it succeed in the past had outlived their usefulness but were now baked into the culture, perpetuated through habits of language and, because invisible, very hard for them to change.

(Ereaut, 2013)