Putting culture into words, value discovery, and a rebranding process

Company: Makery*
Industry: IT service
Company size: 11-50
Location: Budapest
Project keywords: culture discovery, rebranding, value definition, self-management, teambuilding

*Makery was acquired by TIER Mobility in 2021

The client

Before their acquisition by TIER Mobility in 2021, Makery was a development agency aiming to shape the future through design and technology. Unlike many other agencies, they worked with their partners (not calling them clients on purpose) end-to-end, from vision to execution.

The 3 founders strived to build the company they would’ve loved to work for as employees, consciously creating a great culture and adapting the latest best practices in organizational development, which made it very easy for us to work together because we spoke the same language.

Case study

1

I’ve already been working with Makery founders as a facilitator, giving them a structure for thinking about strategic organizational questions they couldn’t fit into their day-to-day workload. They were at a rapid growth phase and wanted to be conscious about where they were going and how the organization would adapt to the changes. (Read the case study about that process here)

3

Goals of our collaboration

Our main goal was to generate meaningful conversations about what Makery is and who Makers are in order to unearth the elements of their culture, to exchange stories to connect their present reality to the origins of the company, and for people to spend meaningful time together.

Challanges

2

During that process, the founders felt the need to refine and get clarity about their identity as a company. In addition to the governance meetings and their strategic planning, we decided to do an exploration involving all Makers (their word for people working in the company) to see how they viewed the organization and what it meant for them.

How to refine and clarify the culture of the company? 

Many new people were joining the company, and we were 6 months after the pandemic had started at the time, so this was a good opportunity for them to strengthen their shared identity as Makers and reconnect to the stories that made the company what it is.

To be able to dig deep into what made them who they were, people needed to step out of their everyday context for a while. I planned the whole experience so that they could feel as if they were all sitting together around a virtual campfire, exchanging stories in a very relaxed and fun way.

Involving everyone in the culture clarification process

We also wanted to generate insights and content we could later use in the rebranding process.

Generating insights

How to address a rapid growth phase?

How to strengthen the shared identity of Makers? 

Identifying core elements of culture

They also felt that their website, other communication materials, and the services they were providing needed an update. As they were fine-tuning other aspects of the company, they wanted those channels to clearly reflect how they saw themselves. They wanted to understand the current identity of the team and the brand, and possibly channel those insights into a rebranding.

These weren’t burning challenges for them but a proactive initiation to talk about their culture because they understood that that’s what would support them through the changes they were about to face

How to refresh the external representation of Makery?

Culture Day

A 1-day online event (separated into two parts) to unearth the stories that made Makery the organization it was. A workshop designed to help people connect and reconnect to the company and each other.

Pre-workshop interviews

Before the Culture Day, I did short interviews with all team members to gather stories and understand the realities of Makery.

Rebranding project team

I facilitated meetings concerning the rebranding and participated in the process as a project team member.

The founders also had an intention to encourage team members to be more proactive, so we used this project as an opportunity to inject knowledge about self-management.

A value definition process

One insight from the project team was that even though Makery had a really strong culture that people lived and understood, they had no exact way of putting them into words. They came to the conclusion that a first step for making it more tangible could be naming their values.

Elements of the value definition process: 

  • an industry-specific research and a workshop about values and how to define them as inspiration for the team 
  • value definition workshops and a facilitated process to create a list of values the team felt connected to 
  • designing the involvement and feedback process of the whole organization to validate by the whole team

Project elements

4

Impact of our collaboration

The Culture Day and value definition process was successful in turning Makery’s previously sensed but not verbally expressed culture into something more tangible. By the end of the process, the team had clearly defined values, vision, mission and aims for the organization. 

In addition to the tangible outcomes of the project, the process gave an opportunity for team members to feel involved and connect to the culture even more. The Culture Day was a chance for newcomers to get an intense understanding of how people do things as Makers, and they could hear old stories and the meaning behind a few catchphrases and "insider jokes".

The stories and insights we gathered during the Culture Day created a solid base for the rebranding process.

Even though the journey of Makery took another turn, my favourite story about the impact of our collaboration came a couple months after we finished this collaboration. I was invited by the team to be a speaker at their onsite event with TIER, where I could finally meet some of the team members in person too. As we had a chat, one of the founders recalled how the outcomes of the culture definition process were a piece of the puzzle when they made a decision about the acquisition.

It turned out that TIER was going through a similar value definition process at the same time. When they took a look at the values of both companies, they saw that they basically overlapped. 

Among the many aspects one has to consider when making a decision about such a life-changing event in the history of a company, the results of our culture and values definition work could serve as an extra reassurance.

5

Something my partners appreciate a lot when we work together is that I always look for opportunities to stack programs in a way that provides the most value for them.

A consultant can’t do anything without understanding the organization's unique context and delivering a diagnosis first, but this process can seem like a waste of time and money from the company’s point of view because they feel like the consultant just repeats things they already know. To avoid this issue, I’m always looking for ways to kill multiple birds with one stone and generate value even during the discovery phase of the collaboration.

A good example of this is the interviews I did with everyone from the team before the Culture Day. Other than helping me prepare for the workshop, they also acted as my onboarding into the company so I could serve as a more valuable team member in the rebranding process, not just a facilitator. I also channeled the summary of my insights from these interviews into the governance meetings with the founders, giving them new opportunities to understand what was important to their people.

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