127 | From Words to Action: How Storytelling Unifies, Empowers & Transforms Organisations | The Cumberland

We have some exciting things to tell you about that's happened, how we, with you, developed a compelling story around the change journey that we're on.

And these stories are sitting there in people's businesses, and it just takes a simple exercise just to get it out.

At Inspiring Change, we're here to help build work cultures that bring out the best in people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from people shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa or pop in your earbuds wherever you are. Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. As I always say at the beginning of these podcasts, if you could take literally 10 seconds to just give us a little 5-star, or 4-star is fine as well, review on wherever you're listening and a few kind words, that'd be helpful just in terms of getting the podcast out there. So thank you, I really appreciate that. Just do it now while you're listening, and hopefully, yeah, we'll see you doing that a little bit for further episodes as well. Today we are talking about storytelling, which as somebody like me who is a communicator and has words and relationships and building better cultures at the heart of what he does, stories are absolutely critical to making all of that happen. Human beings are not people who like lists of things, who like spreadsheets, who like long lists of data or giant PowerPoint decks because we just don't remember it. All the research suggests that we don't retain the information when we see it like that. We're hardwired for story. It's why the Aboriginals have never written anything down. The world's oldest people, 50,000 years old, and everything is handed down through story, what they call the Dreamtime. All the stuff back to the days when they would've been out having to catch their food, find water, get from A to B, was all handed down through stories around fires from young to old. And we love stories. And that is something that we can use as organizations, particularly when we're going through change, to bring our people, to bring our employees, employees on that journey. Today, my guests are Des Moore. He's the CEO of Cumberland Building Society, and Shelley Hayward, who is the Head of Engagement and Learning also at the Cumberland Building Society. And in the interest of full transparency, they're actually a client of ours. And what I said to them was, I would love to have you both on to come and talk about the project that we ran over the past 18 months, where it came from, why it happened, and the impact that it's had on people in the organization. So, um, before we get into all that. Good morning, both of you. How are you doing? Good morning, Dez. Good morning, Shelley.

Good morning, Scott.

Nice to have you both here. Um, thanks a million. Um, listen, what we might do is, you know, for those who have been listening to the podcast for a while, they may know Dez back from 2018, um, when we first talked about the change that the Cumberland was going through. And this was back quite near the beginning of Dez's tenure as CEO. And we said we'd come back and revisit, as he just reminded me. I think I may have said at the time 6 or 9 months. It's taken us 6 years, but that's okay because that means there's loads to talk about. But Des, why don't you just give us a quick background on yourself for those that maybe didn't catch the podcast the last time around? Shame on them.

Sure, Scott. So it's episode 20 of your podcast series, just for those who would like to go back and listen to it, but like I did over the last couple of days. So I am a banker for over 40 years. I've been leading the Commodity Business through a transformation journey with Shelley and others for the past 6 years. We've some exciting things to tell you about that's happened in that meantime, not least of all, how we, with you, developed a compelling narrative or story around the change journey that we're on.

Brill, thanks, Des. Shelley.

So, hi, Scott. Absolute pleasure to be here. So, as you say, I lead the team that looks after engagement, communications, and learning. I joined the business during COVID so 4 years ago, I can't believe it. We've done so much in that time, but my background is logistics and retail, so this is my first stint in financial services and loving it. I think the only thing that I would say is that Cumberland, in terms of what attracted me, was around its purpose. It's, whilst it's a building society, it's always been so much more to its community and to its people, and that's why I've really felt the responsibility of leading on this work and getting the story right. So it's great to be able to talk about it.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Thank you, Des. We did speak back in 2018. You did have plans and thoughts on what that transformation journey might look like. Why don't you just give us a quick update on what's happened since we last spoke?

Yeah, uh, preparing for this is quite difficult because it feels like there's so much has changed, but to try and bring it down to edited highlights, I think The first thing is that there's been a massive change in the culture of the organization. So you'll have all the definitions already, culture, the way we do things around here. But one of the standout points about The Cumberland, actually it's from your own story, people make The Cumberland. And I know every leader says that people make a difference, but it's especially true in The Cumberland in terms of its connection with its local heartland. We are, for all the world, like a community bank. And what's changed over that time, I would say, is that the employee proposition has improved significantly. So I know we talk about pay and rations as being hygiene factors, but actually pay and rations weren't hygiene factors in the Cumberland. So things like minimum pay for certain roles weren't in place. The benefits were pretty vanilla. Then you go on to think about facilities and working environment, hybrid working in particular. Clearly COVID helped, but we didn't have hybrid working available for those who can use it. And then when I think about Shelley's team and the huge steps forwards we've made in terms of supporting people and their own development. So certainly that whole people part in changing the culture and then I'm just gonna stick with that as a task, if I may. We've been monitoring progress through engagement surveys since we last spoke in 2018, and we've seen the organization go from effectively being unrated to this November past, we got a 3-star rating, or a world-class rating, and we're now rated by Best Companies as the second best organization, large organization to work for in financial services, and the 17th best large company in the UK, and that is a mile away from where where we started. So that's probably enough to say about some of the changes we've been going through.

Amazing. Amazing. And while we have you, as you were starting, as you were going through that journey of not just cultural change, but also transformational change in terms of systems and processes, what was it that made you think we need a story? When and why did that pop into your head?

Yeah, it was always a kind of a nagging doubt that we didn't have a common, consistent, or easy to We don't understand narrative for our own people, a kind of a nagging doubt because you try and have the conversation and you will get 6 or 7 different versions of the same thing. They had some common highlights, but actually, it was quite different for everybody. So the idea that we would bring together a common narrative which had enough leeway to encompass everyone's input but still made a compelling story, that was quite attractive. And we wanted to bring to life the individual stories that make up the Cumberland. That's what makes the Cumberland different, that everyone has a story to tell, both our people, our own people inside, but actually, if you say the Cumberland to anyone in our part of the world, they all have a story to tell about how the Cumberland has intervened for the better in their lives. So, I can't think of a better reason than that.

Yeah.

And Shelley, I remember, and I'll probably never forget this actually, one of the first times we spoke about you having a narrative to support that transformation, journey. At the end of the session, we talked through the process and we talked through what it was and we talked through what happened at the end. And when we, when we finished, you said, I'm so excited, I just want to dance.

I think I probably did, didn't I?

You did. They were exactly, they were exactly the words that you said. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering why, what was it that really, why, why did that resonate with you so strongly?

I think from those conversations with you, it what became really clear was how a story could simplify something that felt quite complex and quite abstract. And what I mean by that is our transformation, you know, strategy, you mentioned it before, is it's, you know, maybe not so engaging for people. So, to find a way that we could connect people, emotionally connect people to the journey that we were on, was super, super exciting. And also, our people deserved it. Our people— Dez said it, it's the first chapter of the story, people make the Cumberland. But to find a way where we could engage as many colleagues as possible in something that would outlive all of us was really exciting.

Yeah, amazing. And I think probably, actually, what I probably said was strategy is really boring and a bit like HR policy. People know that we have to have have them, but they hope they never actually have to read one.

Yeah, Scott, I wasn't going to say strategy is boring, because I'm sitting here with my chief exec, but I'll leave that one to you.

I can see that as the external. It's fine.

It's fine.

So, we have this idea, this seed of an idea to build a story to celebrate the people in the organization, to help align them with the transformation, to help them see the role that they play in that journey, because I think there was a line that I used last week in a workshop that people don't mind change, they just don't like being changed. And I think that if we can help people to understand what the journey is and the part they play on that journey, that's really powerful, because it means they want to then come with us. What was the process that we went through to get that story out of you?

So I think before I dive into the process that we went through, I think an important part was firstly realizing that it wasn't— we weren't the right people to gather the stories. Sometimes you've got to create, to create that space, to create the, the right environment to, for colleagues to feel really comfortable with, um, saying how they feel about an organization. You have to recognize as a team, um, that you need to find a partner, and that's where, that's where you guys came in, and it was awesome to find you. Um, I think in terms of those steps, I think the first stage was about identifying a really broad cross-section of colleagues. You cannot build a story and just focus on your senior leadership team. You need to recognise that everyone's got something to say, from those that have been in the organisation 40 years old, and we have 40 years, and we've got some of those people, to those new starters that have just joined us. Thinking about diversity and background, so you get a good cross-section of colleagues in that regard, and also where they're based in the organisation. So, we identified those people and then we put on really big ears. We got them in a room, we did these sessions remotely, but we listened, we asked some beautiful questions: 'What makes you proud? Tell us a story.' So, even the process of creating the story started with stories themselves. We also asked colleagues about things that frustrated them. We asked them to describe where they thought we were going, and in their own words, they were able to try and demystify what it was that, or where they thought that we were headed. And we just gave a lot of time to it. And what's beautiful about that process is not only did we get the words, the that helped you build the chapters of the story, but we also identified little illustrations, little visuals, mementos for each one of those stories. So colleagues that helped us with creating the story may not have seen the words, their own words in the chapters, but there are images that support the chapters of the story that they will see themselves in. And there's a number of them that I that always come to mind when I think about the story, one being a picture of a boat, which is in Chapter 2, which was a story that a colleague gave around how our branch colleagues supported our customers during Storm Desmond and the floods that hit Carlisle at the time. And yeah, it's brilliant because it created that emotional connection, not just through the words, but also through the pictures.

Yeah, brilliant. And I love that Because look, lots of organizations do corporate narrative in different ways. Some of them, the CEO and the SLT will just go off to a country club for a couple of days or go into a dark room and then come out at the end of it and say, ta-da, here's our story, make it happen to everybody. But of course, people don't feel ownership of something that they haven't had a hand in creating. And actually, it's the same values. I've seen your teams go off and just create values or create a purpose. People don't feel don't feel ownership of those. They don't feel compelled to live them or they don't feel that they're theirs. And I think the fact that yours was co-created, that those stories bubbled up and actually, I see Dez nodding on the camera, that there were stories in there that the senior team had probably never heard. There were little things that popped out that people said, sometimes our processes and systems can feel like wading through treacle. That was another one of the little pictures that went in there for me. You know, expertise being parachuted into the organization, that ended up in there. So, you know, getting, eking out some of that pain, but also some of that celebration and some of that pride, I think really helped to end up with something that was really quite balanced, that recognized the good, but also recognized the challenge.

Absolutely. And the story's got to do that. It can't just be focused on the good. People see through that. We're going through a huge transformation and change is hard. So you have to, we had to find a way of also acknowledging the things that were getting in the way, the boulders, the bungee rope. I always remember that story that was said about feeling like as if you're on a bungee rope and yeah, you've got to give colleagues that time to talk about those things.

Yeah, beautiful. Des, any thoughts?

Yeah, I think the magic happened in the co-creation piece that Shelley's already alluded to, as have you, that actually the beauty was the process. While the result was good, all the magic happened in the process and the co-creation, the warts and all approach actually worked for us as a gritty northern business. And we were able to reflect the great things and also some of the challenges. So that made it more authentic than when we got to the finished product. So it was, yeah, it was good. I don't know if we're going to go on and talk about The activation of the famous Kendall Calling, I don't know if this is the time, but I would like to refer to that. And Shelley, not coming from financial services, has a huge creativity in her background. So bringing all of our people together in Kendall over 2 days last January, that to me was like, that's a highlight that will live with me forever. First of all, we brought everybody together over 2 days while keeping the business open, but bringing them together to celebrate and to tell and share those stories and to use the Positivity Tree, which Shelley will explain much better than me in a couple of minutes, that activation was magnificent. And the creativity that was involved from Shelley and her team to create that atmosphere and that to me was just, Who was the highlight of the whole thing? Shelly?

I love, I love the idea that the process of getting to the story was almost, if not more important than the actual story itself, the co-creation, the ideas, the thinking. And I think that a word that you just used there, actually, authenticity. It's really easy to go out and create a narrative perhaps in a vacuum without that insight and input, and you end up with something which just doesn't quite resonate with people. It's all very positive and all very, you know, look where we're going, and it's all very purposeful and visionary. But people are looking at that and they're saying, but the processes and systems that we have today aren't fit for purpose, and I can't do my job, and you're talking to me about that. I can't even do my job. I'm still photocopying, you know, passports and putting them on a fax machine. Seriously, we don't have Wi-Fi in our branch. Seriously. So you're asking me to do all these amazing things, but actually not recognizing the challenge. And I think that, that balance is wonderful of having, as I said, that balance of, of what the challenges are today versus where you want to be as an organization and bringing people on that journey, meeting them where they are. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're Struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. We fast forward, and Des fast forwarded there to Cumberland Calling back in January earlier this year. If you're listening to this in the future, it was in Jan, Feb '24. We, so we got to a point where we had the finished article, right? And you then went all guns blazing to say, we really need to get this out to people. Why was it so important to get everyone together? And probably the second question there then is, and Des jumped straight to the staff events, of course, pre-Christmas, December '23, we got all the leaders together. Not something that as an organization you've done often. Why, why was it important to get those leaders together? What did that bring? And why then did you think it was important to bring all the people together?

I think we've hit upon a few of these points about that, the need for connection and emotionally connecting people to it and giving that time. You know, the people leaders event was critical. People leaders in any organization, whether you're going through change, and which organizations aren't going through change, are absolutely paramount. They are your communicators. They're the people that take everything that's coming down from the senior leadership team, and they're the people that cushion and take from everything coming up from their team. So to get them in a room together, to give them the time to hear the story first, um, to have all the senior leaders in the same room all together, um, sharing the story, sharing their stories, was absolutely crucial. And I— we also invited some customers into that event. Yeah, I remember.

That was powerful. That was really scary, but really powerful.

It was really scary. I vividly remember a conversation with Dez when I said to him, we're going to invite two customers in, because as you said, Scott, that honesty and the connection of the story with colleagues isn't enough for this organisation. We said at the beginning that we're— this business has always been about the community, so connecting our customers with it was also going to be key. We needed to ensure that it lived up to what our customers were expecting from us and that we listened to them. But I remember saying to Dez that we were going to invite some customers in, and his face was one of, um, yeah, I could see his face now. He was like, are you sure? Do we really do— should we do this? And it was, yeah, no, we have to. We— so we got customers in to talk to us, to share their stories. We asked them some of the questions that we asked our colleagues about, tell us about your experiences with us, what makes you proud? And do you know what? That was gold. None of it was scripted, but one of the customers actually put a light on a conversation that he had with someone, with a people leader that was was in that audience at that time. They didn't know it, about a very, um, a conversation about a mortgage break. And it was during their, um, it was during COVID um, and they— it was just, it was just beautiful. And so I think in that moment we were creating new stories about our business, um, but getting them feeling really emotionally connected and to not only the story, but to why we're here, which is in service of our customers. But ultimately, what that event did was got all of our people leaders behind the need to really engage and communicate, get this story out to our colleagues. And that's what led to the Cumberland Is Calling event, which took place in January.

Amazing. So tell us a little bit about that event. What happened there? And again, why, why was it so important to get people together face-to-face?

Because face-to-face is not the norm, it's the difference now. To have all of your colleagues in one room, hearing the same messages, feeling connected with all of their colleagues, having the time and space to think about the business, the strategy, the purpose, our values. The— that can't— there's just not words to explain the energy that is generated as a consequence of that. And it was quite a simple format in the sense that the story was told, the senior leaders also shared their own stories. So, for each one of the chapters, our senior team shared the stories that came to mind for them in relation to those chapters. And following that, each of— we— everybody was split into groups and they went around this fabulous venue in Kendal doing activities to connect them with that particular chapter. They worked with people that they'd never worked with, so connections, new connections and networks were made around the organisation. But more importantly, they told stories, they listened to the story, and they went away feeling hugely inspired, I hope, and certainly the feedback gave us that impression, and connected to the story as well.

Amazing. Amazing. When I think about events like that, and we see clients running them all the time, and they'll often say to maybe us or another external facilitator, can you come in and run this event for us? But I think that right up the front, we had a discussion which was, no, no, this is the Cumberland story. This needs to be owned by you. This isn't about bringing in a famous face or a local news reader or somebody else to come and be the anchor for that day. That's a job that you need to do as a senior team. You need to be the ones up the front owning this. That again, this isn't something that we're doing to you as an organization. This is something that we are all involved in. And I wonder, Des, from your perspective, when you think about that role of the SLT in how they brought story to life at the launch. Why was that so important?

Yeah, I thought you were a bit mad when you said we'll bring the whole leadership team into communicating the message. But actually, again, I think that you had been quite thoughtful because each of the SLT members, you know, it's not a, you know, we're not all chips off the one block. Everybody has a perspective and background and also a different presenting style and a different way of owning things. So I won't embarrass them by mentioning the individual stylistic characteristics, not on this podcast. But it also made for authenticity because they were presenting it in their own way. And I remember quite vividly, you insisted that we rehearse, even though we patently didn't want to do it. And actually, that led to a level of professionalism and a level of ownership of— you can't just rock up to this thing and read something out. And own it as passionately as we needed to. So, you know, I might have resisted it at the start, but it was the right thing to do and it made for better storytelling. And everyone on the senior leadership team and the exco owns, or is accountable rather, for everyone else in the room. So everyone has a direct link to a person presenting a chapter. So I think it worked really well from that perspective.

I think that point about rehearsing is a really interesting one because it's such a, such, such an important thing, but such a tiny thing that often ends up in the AOB on an agenda somewhere near the bottom. But actually, you know, if this was a customer event, you would categorically be up there doing that, practicing, seeing how each other sound, making sure the links are there between each of you, making sure that you're not covering the same stuff. But it's funny, when it becomes an internal event, it suddenly is is deemed often in organizations is deemed to be less important. And we'll just rock up on the day and we'll just say whatever. And actually, it's not good enough. And actually having that time to rehearse is really, really important. And I think that you all realize that it made you better on the day.

I agree, Scott.

Yeah. So Des, Shelley, Des talked earlier on about the, the positivitry.

The positivitry.

Positivitry, which as I said yesterday, I've now trademarked.

Scott.

So you can't have it. I've pinched that. We've talked a lot about the process of going through the creation of the narrative. And of course, we had a few stories in there, but we didn't get to talk to everybody in the organization. We got to talk to a snapshot or a percentage of people in the organization. The events, in-person events gave you an opportunity to hear from everybody in the organization. And if memory serves, in chapter 1, where we talked about the pride of the organization, we asked people as part of that exercise, exercise to think about a time when they had been really proud to work for the Cumberland and why that was, and to just maybe give us a few lines of a bit of a story. Tell us more about that.

Yeah, what an exercise that was. Actually, you asking the question around the positivity and asking, you know, for us to speak about it today led me to go back and have a look at some of the pictures that we took of of that positivitree. But I'll start with explaining what this positivitree is for people.

Other than just a word that we made up.

Yeah, absolutely. So, when we were building the story, when we were starting to design the event, we were looking back through archives of old stuff to do with the Cumberland. And we came across one of the first articles, adverts for the Cumberland, which was in the Cumberland Gazette or Cumberland News, an old newspaper at the time. And it was a picture of a tree with 1850 etched onto a wee sign that was hanging from the tree. And we thought to ourselves, we've got to use this tree in some way. And in fact, it came— it was used in Chapter 1 as an illustration. So we took that image and we made it into a massive 7-foot board where we quite simply asked colleagues to stick a Post-it note on with a story, a time of when they felt particularly proud. And I don't think that there was anybody that left that board from standing in front of it without tears in their eyes. It was, it was truly remarkable. And we were really blessed at the events for our non-exec directors to attend as well. And I think it's, it can be hard for non-execs to really, they can feel the culture, but that they saw it on the day, they saw it and they were able to read it too. Some of the stories were, I've written some of them down here so that I didn't forget them, but things like the pride that colleagues felt helping customers during the pandemic with mortgage payment breaks. There was a story from somebody of them going, being out for dinner and hearing somebody talk about the Cumberland and how great the service was. From one of the branch teams, Post-its on the sense of friendship and team that they feel across the business, to the way that we supported colleagues when a member of the team sadly died last year. And they were stories that would have been told, but in small groups, and for the first time we were able to have— there was hundreds of these Post-it notes with stories, some big, some small, some— they came from all corners of the business, but all of them reflected the kindness and the community and everything that we stood for. They told the story of the Cumberland. It was beautiful. Des, I remember you reading one out at the end of the event.

Certainly one around a group of staff stepping in to effectively become Father Christmas for a group of people who wouldn't otherwise have celebrated Christmas. And quite honestly, you couldn't read that without having a lump in your throat. So it was that they were exactly what we needed, the individual stories coming together in one place. And Shelley did send those during the last couple of days, was a lovely reminder. I was just peering at them there, you see on screen, just to see if I could read any. But yeah, The stories is what makes the organisation.

And isn't it amazing, back to my point at the very top of the conversation, that we remember stories? I couldn't tell you how many people were there. I couldn't tell you any of the detail, but I can tell you the story that I read, which was written up by one of your branch colleagues about a lady that brought in her elderly parents, one of whom had dementia, and they were trying to sort out all the banking details for the couple, which must have been incredibly harrowing. Doing for, for the family. Um, but the note came back about— she'd received a note back from that. I'm getting goosebumps actually and shivers just thinking about it. Um, incredibly difficult discussion to have with your parents, but she's then sent a note into the branch the next day to say, thank you so much for being so kind to us. Um, and that just, that just says it all, doesn't it?

And these stories are sitting there in people's businesses, and it just takes a simple exercise just to get it out of Yeah, it was brilliant.

Yeah, yeah, because they are hidden, they are hidden, buried in the bowels of the, of organizations. And as you say, we just need to kind of somehow get them out, get them out so we can all share and celebrate them. So yeah, for sure. Um, as you move forward, how will the Cumberland story continue to support your transformation journey? I'll ask both of you, so maybe Shelley, if you want to go first, and then I'll ask Des.

Yeah, well, Well, I think we've built toolkits. So, at a really simple level, we've built some toolkits that people leaders can use in their teams to help colleagues and their teams reconnect with the Cumberland story. But we've also got another people leaders event planned in the new year where we will reconnect our people leaders into that, because it's absolutely critical that we remain engaged and that we keep the story at the heart of what we're doing as we move through our transformation, as we go through our change. It's really easy for it to just get lost, you know, work, people are busy. So, we're doing a lot of work at the moment as to how we can include the Cumberland story into our onboarding processes and just into everyday conversations. We've got, we've wrapped a room in Cumberland House, which is our head office in Carlisle, and we've wrapped a room in the Cumberland story, and that looks absolutely fabulous. So just finding new creative ways of how we can keep the story front and centre for people, but storytelling's key. And so also at the People Leaders event next year, we'll be launching some support workshops on storytelling, on communication skills for our colleagues, because the story will evolve, and we have to accept that, you know, what got us here won't get us there. So we need to think about how the story will develop and evolve and maybe new chapters in time as we move through our transformation.

Brilliant. And Des, from the perspective of CEO and SLT, how do you see that story continuing to support that transformation?

Ja, well, let's, to pick up the thread that Shelley's laid, I think the story, the story will evolve. So we're, we're on the cusp of a pretty significant decision around our technology, which was a core part of the transformation that we were preparing for. Even 6 years ago. And I imagine we'll find a way to entwine the story around this big change, this particular piece of work rather, the whole thing is a big change and bring it to life in that way. In fact, that would be a very effective way to bring it to life. And the second reflection is I keep finding myself saying the title to Chapter 1 over and over again, people make the Cumberland. And it actually feeds into our business philosophy too, if I can just elaborate on that point, that we are a community bank in this part of the world, the far northwest of England. And we will differentiate ourselves by providing easy-to-use technology, but you'll always be able to have contact with the human being in those moments of truth. And that We're very clear that that's how we differentiate. And actually, without that human touch, we couldn't write the stories and we couldn't write new versions of the stories in the future. So I'm really keen that we find to take the legacy of the past and to blend it with what we're going to do in the future, but preserve the best parts.

Love it. You know what? I think we probably can leave it there on that whole idea of people make the Cumberland, because I think that's been a theme that's run through the past 35 minutes or so as we've spoken about the journey that you both have been on. Listen, Alison, thank you very much for being on today. Thank you for sharing your experiences and your thinking and your ideas and your creativity and all of that. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you, Scott.

Thanks for the opportunity, Scott.

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