Agencies for Good and Korero on Culture

Korero Studio is an Edinburgh-based strategic design consultancy that helps teams answer big questions. Fast.

Agencies for Good asked Korero Studio some questions about culture. Here’s our response.

1. What does culture mean to you? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when those words are mentioned within the context of Korero Studio?

When an organisation says “We have a great culture” it’s often so vague isn’t it? Folks often describe the culture in fairly pithy statements like “Bold”, “Fast-paced” “Inclusive”.

For us, culture shows itself in the actions people take. Do you stop working at 5? Do you prioritise a colleague’s health if they’re struggling? Do you take time off when you’re ill? Is there evidence that you support colleagues to take risks and still backing them when it doesn’t work out? And well, a ton of other things.

So I suppose what I’m getting at is: Culture should be described through what it does, not what it says it wants to be.

There’s a couple of sentences in Donella H. Meadows seminal book Thinking in Systems that really stuck with me:

“The best way to deduce the system’s purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves. Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals”

2. How has Korero Studio managed to cultivate culture over the years? For example, is it through effective collaboration with the ‘Kokos’ aka freelancers? Or is it through making sure to hire the right people in the first place?

Because organisations hire us to help them make good strategic choices about the direction of their business, it’s key that they trust and feel comfortable with us. And that doesn’t mean that we agree and say yes to everything — one of the best pieces of client feedback we got was “they challenged us, but with warmth”.

That sentiment also feeds into our internal culture, we keep each other right by regularly performing project pre-mortems and retros. This reflective practice enables us to actually hold ourselves accountable, broach sensitive topics and grow.

This thirst for learning is also fed by regularly collaborating with the Kokos — the creative specialists or teams specially chosen for their expertise on the challenge at hand. These talented freelancers are not simply “hired guns” to pick up the slack. When they come in on a project they know exactly what is expected of them, they have a key role to play, all the project management is taken care of so they can jump right in and shine at what they do. We treat them as exciting guests that not only bring that special something to the table but as folk who encourage us and everyone else to bring their best selves to the project. Bringing in the Kokos is our way of celebrating the community, challenging us to bring our A-game and constantly growing and expanding our network.

Coming back to the first question, it’s all about behaviour. We respectfully and warmly challenge our clients so as to build trust, we make time for reflective practice and we recognise and celebrate our community — because none of us is as smart as all of us.

3. Is there anything you’ve found when it comes to culture in the workplace that you’d like to share with the AfG community?

When you’re setting out creating a company, try and articulate what you’d like your culture to be like in the most specific and pragmatic way possible. Don’t use ambiguous words like “passionate” or “flexible”. How about a list of actions that reflect your cultural aspirations?

• “We go home at 5pm”
• “We take time off when we’re sick”
• “It’s okay, we don’t need to love our work all the time”
• “It’s totally fine to not bring your whole self to work. Some days you will, some days you won’t”
• “When we’re totally into a bit of work, we share it”
• “We take breaks. It’s fine to go for a walk if you’re not feeling right”

Stuff like that. It doesn’t need to be mega-inspiring.

4. Lastly, as a bonus question — Korero Studio is a very unique name. Out of curiosity, how did it come about?

In Maori, Korero means “To come together for a talk or discussion”. And that, at its core, is what we do: we create safe spaces for people to have valuable and productive discussions — specifically for those big-scary-business-critical decisions that all businesses struggle with.

We’ve been creating digital products for over 20 years, and time and time again we’ve seen projects fail, not because of a lack of individual capability within teams, but because teams simply aren’t aligned: There’s no shared understanding of the problem they’re trying to solve, or the outcomes they’re trying to achieve.

Having smart and talented people on your team doesn’t always equate to a great output. Smart people need the right processes and environments to do great work. And that’s a big part of what we do — we help teams communicate.