Crafting solutions to create a new team culture for Ipswich Community Media.

AKOU was retained by Ipswich Community Media (ICM) to provide support, research, guidance and solutions for a number of organisational challenges. ICM provides a wide range of services to the Ipswich community. From English as a Second Language (ESOL) classes for the local migrant population, a local radio station that helps over 80 people to gain new skills and experiences, through to a range of media and creative activities and services for local young people.

The team faced a wide range of challenges. From operational through to clarity of mission and vision. AKOU crafted a number of exercises, resources and solutions to help the team work together better. Helping to build a stronger sense of support within the organisation.

Initial interviews and observations with the team highlighted various key challenges. AKOU identified and proposed a number of innovative solutions and worked closely with the management team to help implement them. Activities included peer-to-peer feedback loops, staff perceptions surveys and whole team workshops.

These activities helped to inform a ‘Who are we’ report giving a concise overview of the team and organisation. It helped the management team to explore new ways of operating and managing organisational culture and communication. The report presented ICM with a number of ‘design principles’. These were a set of recommendations relating to some operational challenges that were derived from the ICM team as a whole, and could be used to help tackle key issues such as organisational feedback loops, communication structures and staff morale.

Following a number of one-to-one support sessions and a second round of perception surveying, our work with ICM culminated in a whole team away day. This helped to collectively focus on building a new team culture, shared vision and mission as well as celebrating the shared success and work of the whole team.