Sustaining the brand purpose and team culture in a rapidly growing inter-city organisation

CONTEXT + CHALLENGE

321 Education Foundation is a young organisation working in the education sector in India. They focus on providing School Improvement and Teacher Training programs for low-income schools across the country. The team had rapidly grown across cities and was struggling to sustain the brand culture. They were looking to reinforce a stronger sense of purpose and alignment across teams.

 

APPROACH + LEARNINGS

The organisation had an archived 30-page white-paper doc that outlined their organisational culture, purpose and vision. We attended their annual retreat and induction sessions to understand their team culture. Through our team workshops, we learnt that the documentation was dense, complex, with layers of information nested within. It sat in an online shared folder and was rarely used or referred to by teams due to its complexity.

 

SOLUTION

We decided to convert the layered documentation into a handy deck of cards. We was inspired by IDEO’s research method cards. The information was organised using internally used colour coding. This allowed us to have nested components within categories. We reworked the content and prioritise the most relevant information. The medium allowed it to be flexible and scalable. Teams could add/remove information, or replace a card with outdated information with ease. Each team member received a deck during their induction. The culture cards were a huge success. The cards were bright, colour-rich, and fun to engage with. The handy size has resulted in all team members snapping them onto their bags and using them more frequently. They have become an integral part of group meetings, and team discussions.