Culture Activation

Results

50%

Increase in feeling part of an effective team

discovered in a Team Effectiveness Survey

66%

Increase in open, honest and direct communication

discovered in a Team Effectiveness Survey

50%

Increase in holding each other accountable

discovered in a Team Effectiveness Survey

THE BUSINESS

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protects UK consumers when their financial services firm fails, providing confidence, continuity and compensation while supporting financial stability. Its new five-year strategy set out an ambition to build a purpose-performance culture, with the potential to strengthen how FSCS delivers for consumers, works together as an organisation and responds to a changing financial services landscape.

THE CHALLENGE

FSCS recognised that delivering its ambitions would require a different kind of organisation and leadership. The Executive Team had high levels of individual expertise and commitment, but relationships were mixed and its prevailing dynamic was high challenge and low support. CEO Martyn Beauchamp wanted to build an Executive Team that was greater than the sum of its parts, while ensuring its leadership behaviour enabled rather than constrained cultural change. FSCS also wanted an independent external perspective to challenge existing thinking and align the team’s leadership shadow with its new Ways of Working.

The thing that really stood out about Coode was the combination of attitude and expertise. They were responsive, empathetic, collaborative and fearless in giving us the feedback we needed.

Martyn Beauchamp

CEO

THE APPROACH

Over the course of nine months, we partnered with the Executive Team to strengthen team effectiveness and support the leadership behaviours needed by:

Team effectiveness: Establishing a clear baseline through individual interviews and a Team Effectiveness Survey, identifying the team’s strengths, challenges and priorities for development.
Trust & support: Helping the Executive Team build stronger relationships and shift from a dynamic of high challenge and low support towards high challenge and high support.
Leadership alignment: Developing a shared Team Charter and common language around leadership, culture and the team’s role in delivering FSCS’s strategy.
Practical development: Combining team sessions with individual coaching, mentoring and ongoing advisory support to turn insight into changes in day-to-day leadership behaviour.
Leadership shadow: Using feedback from senior leaders across FSCS to understand how the Executive Team’s leadership was experienced beyond the team itself and identify areas for continued focus.
Wider leadership: Extending the work into the Senior Leadership Community, strengthening alignment between the Executive Team and the leaders responsible for embedding FSCS’s Ways of Working across the organisation.

More case studies

Since 2019, Coode has partnered with Solina to support its transformation into a globally aligned organisation. As the company achieved fivefold revenue growth and expanded across Europe, the Americas and Asia, integrating 18 acquisitions, Coode helped define a unifying strategic narrative and operating model that balanced local agility with global scale. By aligning leadership and embedding shared cultural principles, Solina built one cohesive story that continues to drive its international success.

In 2022, a new CEO took to the helm of Concurrent Technologies Plc, an organisation that was well-established in its niche but had hit a plateau. The business had no formal leadership team, with most key decisions previously made by the former CEO. There had been little emphasis on leadership development, and the company lacked the ambition to grow.

In late 2020, No7 Beauty Company was launched as a standalone consumer packaged goods company under the Walgreens Boots Alliance to maximise its commercial opportunity. The business was in ‘recovery mode’ from the effects of the pandemic, and Mark Winter was appointed as a new Managing Director to lead the company.

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