Leading lasting cultural change

Walking down Northumberland Road and into Northumbria University’s City Campus, it is impossible not to notice the institution’s primary branding ‘TakeOnTomorrow’.

Set against banners celebrating alumni who have gone on to achieve notable success in their respective fields, it speaks to a wider ambition – one rooted in new thinking, real-world impact and a commitment to shaping the future through innovation, research and education.

Yet while many aspire to take on tomorrow, success is rarely achieved in isolation.

More often than not, it is shaped by the environments we operate in – and the cultures that either enable people to thrive or, conversely, hold them back.

And in an increasingly complex and high-pressure world, it is those organisations that actively shape their cultures – rather than leave them to chance – that are more likely to succeed.

It was this idea that sat at the heart of Northumbria University’s recent Culture in Conversation event, supported by multi-platform publisher NET, where senior leaders from HR and organisational development came together to explore what it takes to build fair, high-performing organisations.

The afternoon featured a series of speeches and breakout sessions, designed to challenge assumptions, share real-world experience and offer practical insight into how organisations can embed stronger, more effective cultures.

Following an introduction from Matthew Brannan, head of Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School, audience members heard from Matt Beeton, chief executive at Port of Tyne; Joanne Davidson, deputy director of workforce, organisational effectiveness and learning at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust; and Charlotte Cumiskey, organisational development manager at Northumbria University.

Across the speeches, a clear message emerged: positive organisational cultures are not defined by statements or strategy documents, but rather by everyday behaviours, trust and the ability for people to feel heard, valued and safe. 

John Duns, director and joint owner of NET, which supported the event as media partner

Matt spoke candidly about leading the change at Port of Tyne since becoming chief executive in 2019, starting with a focus on bridging the gap between senior leadership and the wider workforce, and then resetting the organisation’s culture from the ground up.

He said: “We set about levelling the playing field and creating values that related to everyone.

“For 12 months, we had everybody in rooms deciding what that really meant; how they should be spoken to, how respect should be shown and how they should engage with one another.

“They were setting the rules for everyone, and those values became the benchmark of everything we do.”

That cultural reset underpinned the launch of Tyne 2050, a long-term strategy shaped directly by all employees.

Matt said: “We got everybody together from the port, got them into smaller groups, and we said, ‘what do you want this port to be over the next 30 years?’

“They were really ambitious, especially when it came to technology.

“It’s a vision that’s very exciting, and one that everybody wants to be part of.”

The impact, Matt said, has been “astonishing”, with the team delivering strong results despite a challenging global backdrop, including exceptional EBITDA growth, cutting carbon emissions and positioning the port as a “powerhouse of clean energy and innovation”. 

He said the “transformation” circles back to people and culture.

Matt added: “All we did was make sure we have the right people – people that care about other people.

“We have created an environment in which our creative people can be creative, our hard workers can work hard and feel valued, and our amazing people can be amazing.

“If you can glue all of that together, and you’ve got people with a passion who want to make it work, then you’ve got a business that is going to move forward.”

Matt Beeton, chief executive at Port of Tyne

Joanne spoke about embedding a restorative and “just learning” culture at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, centred on continuous reflection, adaptation and openness.

She explained that while the organisation’s Strategy for Perfect Care, introduced in 2013, set out ambitious goals to improve standards, it did not initially achieve the success they had hoped for.

She said: “At one point, there was a complete incongruence with the reality of how it felt, how it was removed from the staff experience perspective.”

That realisation, she said, prompted a shift away from traditional and often punitive approaches to managing incidents and mistakes, instead focusing on fostering an environment where employees felt supported to speak openly, reflect and learn.

Joanne added: “In a system that’s inherent with risk, things will not always go as expected.

“So, we respond with care and emotional support, and then say, ‘what should we do now and what are we learning?’”

Central to this shift was a sustained programme of engagement across the organisation, helping to create a culture of belonging where people felt listened to, valued and part of the change.

Joanne added: “It wouldn’t be me or my colleagues proposing a set of values or behaviours; it was our colleagues saying, ‘we’ve seen this, we’ve lived it, it’s real’.”

That approach has since been embedded across the organisation, from leadership development through to day-to-day practice.

Joanne said: “If you’re a manager in Mersey Care, restorative just culture is now blueprinted in your induction; it runs right through everything we do.”

While she acknowledged challenges remain in a complex and high-pressure environment, Joanne stressed sustained progress depends on maintaining a commitment to learning and ongoing improvement.

She added: “It’s an imperfect system trying to do perfect work.”

Charlotte focused on how organisations can build a culture of psychological safety, drawing on her experience of supporting leadership development at Northumbria University.

Citing the work of American academics Amy Edmondson and Timothy Clark, Charlotte highlighted the importance of creating a “team climate rooted in trust” and what Clark describes as a culture of “rewarded vulnerability”.

She said: “Psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of the team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

Challenging common assumptions, Charlotte explained that high-performing teams are not those that avoid mistakes, but rather those where people feel able to speak up and learn from them.

She added: “The highest performing teams often make the most errors because they are in environments where it’s safe to speak up about the errors that they are making and to correct them without fear.”

Charlotte stressed this kind of culture does not emerge through top-down initiatives, but rather through consistent behaviours, shaped by everyday actions and interactions.

She said: “Cultures don’t shift through grand organisational gestures; it’s the sum of thousands of moments.”

Pointing to Northumbria University’s five-day Leadership Development Programme, Charlotte outlined how it is embedding these principles in practice through an intensive course designed to build trust, openness and reflection.

She said: “We intentionally try and create moments of psychological safety throughout the week before we even talk about it explicitly.”

From 360-degree feedback to peer support and open reflection, the programme encourages leaders to embrace vulnerability and build stronger connections within their teams.

Through such behaviours, Charlotte said, organisations create the conditions for positive change to occur.

She added: “You can’t always change organisational culture, but you can change the climate around you.

“You can change the experience of the people that you work with, through the meetings that you facilitate, through the interactions that you have and through the relationships that you build.”

Attendees then separated into breakout sessions, led by Joanne, alongside Debra Almond and Matthew Theobald, from Vandewiele UK, who explored growth within a high-performance engineering SME, and Gavin Oxburgh of Northumbria University, who focused on the principles of effective communication.

As the afternoon drew to a close, an insightful, honest and at times challenging panel discussion invited the audience to join the conversation.

The overriding takeaway was that culture is shaped by what leaders do, not what they say – and that those who successfully build trust and meaningfully involve and invest in their workforce will be the ones best placed to create organisations where people and performance thrive.

Photography by Lauren Peters (The Bigger Picture Agency)

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