4 of 9 Culture eats strategy for breakfast

“Only when organisational culture changes can the PTS have the autonomy and understanding it needs to have a real impact.”

Mayday saw that culture change is absolutely key for person-led work to be able to take place and have an impact. Where a learning culture was in place and the PTS was prioritised as a mechanism for uncovering systemic barriers, a shift towards more strength-based thinking and wider practice took place.

The PTS Partnership, as a collective, was able to share examples of change and difference and utilize the weight of the collective evidence and impact to influence through the doing.

PTS Coaching Teams needed to be free to undertake a significant amount of ‘unlearning’ and questioning of what had previously been embedded as ‘best practice’, traditional ways of working with people. Their role demands a much greater level of autonomy. They are required to challenge their own practice, their colleagues and the organisation to effect the changes that people and frontline teams need.

For this to work, the culture of the organisations needs to shift to accommodate learning. This starts from the bravery to recruit the right people and to allow PTS Coaches to take the lead so that they are working for people and not for contracts or organisational blanket policies. Investing senior level time into learning and adaptation helped PTS Coaches to avoid falling back into default traditional practices.

Creating the environment for the PTS to work at the grassroots and adapting to the new learning that emerges leads to much greater impact for people we work with.