Client overview
Compassion is a Christian international holistic child development organisation and exists to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. With over 130 committed team members and many more volunteers, they have a strong passion and drive to fulfil their mission with international impact.
The challenges
Recognising the importance of team engagement, retention and development across the organisation, the CEO identified the need to embed a consistent culture and capability level within the team to create an engaged, committed and scalable organisation. Alongside this culture transformation, the CEO and Executive team identified the opportunity for the organisational strategy to evolve to meet the growing need, increasing poverty and the changing nature of how people give to causes that matter.
Seed & Mind Street adopted a partnership approach, aligning practices and processes to ensure a smooth transition and support for Compassion. This client-centered approach ensured that Compassion’s needs and desired outcomes drove focus and decision making.
There was a strong focus on building internal capability within Compassion, setting the organisation up for long-term success and self-sufficiency in the years to come.
Starting Point
With a changing team and the need to gain national alignment, further complicated by the post-pandemic shift to a hybrid workforce, Mind Street and Seed People Consulting were engaged to realign the culture and capability within Compassion Australia to support the delivery of the five-year strategy. This required a significant shift in both what Compassion does and how it does it to more effectively achieve its mission.
The Co-designed solution
Mind Street and Seed, as a team, quickly determined the key focus areas were aligning the Executive team and embedding Compassion’s values throughout all operations.
Our co-design approach, in partnership with Compassion enabled joint ownership and accountability for focus areas and timings. This also enabled us to adapt to changes across the organisation to ensure the solution was fit for purpose to achieve both organisational and cultural transformation.
Our joint purpose in this project was to help Compassion in achieving its ambitions with greater ease by enabling their strategy through enhanced culture, leadership capability and alignment.
Initially, Seed were engaged to provide foundational organisational development support. With solid cultural and behavioural foundations laid in the initial retainer period, Compassion took the opportunity to re-engage Seed to work closely with Mind Street to build capability and confidence within Compassion.
Over the course of this project, Seed and Mind Street collaborated and worked with key stakeholders at Compassion to design and execute a number of projects, including:
- Executive team discussion insights: conducted interviews and focus groups with internal team members to understand how best to future-proof the organisation in terms of structure and role design
- Pulse survey
- Development and implementation of an organisational capability framework
- The development and facilitation of a tailored ‘Leadership Calibration Session’ for the Compassion Executive and Management team
- Refreshing Compassion’s values/behaviours statements
- Facilitated Executive team sessions
- On-call advice, as needed, to support the embedment of the projects and culture initiatives and provide support to leaders throughout the retainer
With this collaborative approach between Mind Street and Seed, we were about to assist Compassion to establish practical and effective processes and procedures to increase the capability within the team to lead and drive a positive culture. This shift allowed the team to focus their energy on more strategic, value-added initiatives to really benefit Compassion and the organisation as a whole.
“We’re grateful for our partnership with Seed People Consulting and Mind Street for our Cultural and Capability project. Their expertise and collaborative approach were pivotal in strengthening our internal capability and enhancing our organisational culture, enabling us to pursue our mission of releasing even more children from poverty.”
Clare Steele
CEO, Compassion Australia
Positive Outcome
Given our initial engagement as a partnership support with Compassion kicked off in May 2023, we’re proud to have continued our joint partnership with Compassion for the ‘Culture & Capability’ project, which wrapped up in March 2024.
Over the course of our ‘Culture & Capability’ project engagement we have successfully:
- Co-designed and facilitated numerous executive and management team development days contributing to capability development at Compassion
- Conducted pulse surveys
- Developed and refined values and behaviour statements
The collaborative approach to the ‘Culture & Capability’ project has allowed Mind Street, Seed and Compassion to consistently review and assess progress and adjust or shift course or priorities as required, based on what was happening in the organisation at any time. This approach has been ideal for an organisation experiencing significant growth and change, resulting in some amazing achievements for the Compassion team as they focus on their mission to release more children from poverty.
