Disruptors 2021 – Creating a culture of disruption

Creating and nurturing an innovative disruptive mind set in the workplace can be a challenging task but with the current war on talent, it is one that is essential.

This panel event delved into the need of creating a culture to maximize the opportunities but also retaining the right talent and skills in the business and building diverse and resilient teams.

Matt Jones, director at Oxbridge, an online learning provider, said while creating culture has become important – the most recent challenge has been doing so during Covid.

“We’ve all got employees or teammates that we’ve not met,” he said.

“So actually, we’re finding the challenge at the moment is resetting that culture and making sure that all of the team are on the same page. So that’s something that’s a bit of a new challenge for all of us.”

Lee Marples, co-founder of creative agency, think3, said building a culture has been at the heart of their plans since establishing three years go.

“It has been an integral part of what we were trying to do through the people that have joined the team.

“The challenge for us going forward is about what what does that continued growth look like? How do we continue to still find people that have the same approach and the same mentality in terms of what we’re trying to achieve as a business?

“Clearly, with that growth comes challenges with the more people that you’ve got while trying to continue that sense of disruption.

“As a creative agency we’re not massive fans of the remote working model. It’s all about collaboration and you can only do that with a whiteboard and a set of pens and scribbling stuff down which we can’t do on zoom very well.”

Emma Jackson, client innovation manager at law firm Mills & Reeve, added that culture was also about building a mindset.

“I’m in a technology team, but I’m not in a technology company,” she said.

“I work at a law firm and we have worked really hard to try and make a culture of disruption and innovation.

“And that the biggest barrier is the fact that lawyers are actually quite risk averse, they don’t like to fail at anything.

“Whereas we need that to grow our side of the business. It’s actually been a real education piece for the rest of the wider business around how we’re doing things in innovation and approaching it with a different mindset than what they are used to.”

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