Culture – Ideas and activities that will help you create an adaptable, empowered environment

• As often as you can, do activities that mix people up to build trust and smash silo-thinking. Away days, department days, project groups are all an opportunity,  which many charities regularly miss, to reinforce the ethos of working towards the common vision.
• Create project groups where the whole group works to a common goal and shares responsibility for the goals that underpin that.
• Give responsibility to those who display these ‘shared consciousness’ behaviours.
• Model this intra-team ethos with other leaders by taking an interest in and supporting other teams’ projects and objectives.
• Listen and often ask people what they think, so that you empower everyone to take responsibility.
• Constantly reinforce the notion of taking action as an important value in your charity, and model this value. Ask people how you can support them to make this happen, so that you identify and if necessary help solve what is holding people back.
• Promote a learning environment by investing in learning and development. See it as ‘investment’ rather than ‘spending’, because it helps improve the donor experience, and in turn, income.
• Repeatedly ask ‘what can we learn from this?’ and make adjustments to the way things are done.
• Make time for regular conversations about learning and development during one to one meetings. 
• Promote a culture which encourages the willingness to evaluate what is working and what is not, and to learn from both. Ask ‘what can we learn from this?’ and show you are serious about the honest search for answers and solutions rather than placing blame. As Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed explains, whereas in many fields people are reluctant to deal objectively with the issues when things have gone wrong, the reason the airline industry has made such huge progress in safety over the decades is its willingness to o learn from mistakes.
• Clearly investing in courses and conferences is valuable, but even if your budgets are limited, there are still many other affordable practices that make a big difference to your culture. Here are some practical techniques that others have found helpful.

Six inexpensive, powerful ways to create a learning culture

1. Encourage everyone to make a development plan to share with their manager. As Liz Tait from Battersea Cats and Dogs Home points out, it can be an incredibly simple document, but the fact that it exists helps you and your manager to value and encourage personal development, and the many ways it benefits the fundraiser, the manager and the donor’s experience.
2. Encourage people to find mentors with whom they can regularly discuss work and professional development issues. They don’t need to wait for a formal mentoring system - encourage them to arrange something informally through colleagues and people in their network.
3. Create a book club for sharing ideas from work-related books. Richard Turner used this to great effect at Solar Aid.
4. Join volunteer-organised groups such as IOF Special Interest Groups, which hold inexpensive events and provide on-line ways to connect and solve common problems
5. Read and share helpful blogs; encourage others to do the same. 
6. Read and share helpful blogs; encourage others to do the same. 
7. As Liz Tait from Battersea Cats and Dogs Home suggests, during team meetings and away days, make time to include team building activities, rather than only discussing tasks and strategies.