Edition 21 - How to build a high performance culture.

Hey folks - David here. ??

Thanks for joining us again this week for another edition of my weekly, scratch that, as- -frequently-as-I-can-make-it newsletter.?

Last week's discussion on how to spot dead wood in any organisation spurred a lot of great questions with the biggest one being “how do you build a high-performance culture at 11:FS?” So as promised this is what we are going to talk about a little more today.

As with everything at 11:FS, our mentality is that whilst we are great at this, we know we can always improve and make things even better. 1% finished right??

Are you ready?

How to build a high performance culture.

To help us bring this to life for you then I’m going to hand over the pen to Hannah Thompson who is our Chief People Officer at 11:FS.?

Over to you Hannah…

Thanks David,? hello everyone. ??

I'm going to be hijacking this week’s Double-click to take you through my reflections on what leads to the high-performance culture we’re pushing for at 11:HQ.?

For me, it boils down to 7 guiding principles:

1. Psychological Safety

At 11:FS we very much have a trust-based people-first culture and believe in positive intent. We treat our Elevens as adults, from our approach to hybrid working right through to how we have open and honest conversations with each other on our wins and areas to improve (or what we like to call blindspots).? We believe that creating an environment that encourages our Elevens to share ideas, suggestions and to be heard is the foundation of a high-performance culture where our Elevens can collaborate and drive a huge impact on each other and our clients.

2. Shared Purpose & Values ?

Two fundamental principles of our culture at 11:FS is our Purpose & Values.? We talk a lot about our ‘why’ - the reason we’re here and the impact we want to have on the industry as a whole; to change the fabric of financial services by improving the lives of billions of people around the world who are underserved or overcharged.

It’s critical for our success that we’re attracting and retaining talented Elevens who are aligned to our purpose, who feel a sense of belonging and are driven to help us succeed in this vision.? We recognise the power of knowing your ‘why’ can motivate you through your successes and be your guiding north star during challenging times.

But that’s only half of the story. Another aspect of our cultural DNA here at 11:FS is our framework of values that weave a common thread through day-to-day life across the business.? Our values - Attitude, Communication, Impact, and, Team aren’t just words on some swag or stuck on the wall in the office but play a big part in all the moments that matter throughout our employee journey - similar to the famous Netflix approach, we hire, train and measure our team performance against these.? Our values influence how we work with each other on projects and we use regular opportunities to spotlight and champion Elevens who embody our values through our monthly peer-nominated Superhero of the Month award right through to how we celebrate those who have recently been promoted.??

However, part of our success to date isn’t just celebrating those who have unleashed their talent within 11:FS.? We have also established rituals across the Company that mean we promptly lean into difficult conversations when Elevens aren’t quite where they need to be, whether that be attitude, achievements or development. Every day that teams do not live your values moves you away from the behaviours you want to champion and can have a big knock on impact on morale in the wider team. So knowing this, our values and behaviours always stay front of mind.

As part of joining 11:FS, my team and I established a quarterly talent review where our Senior Leadership discusses all Elevens, identifying those who are high performers and how we can continue to engage and retain our critical talent. Arguably more importantly, we also discuss the actions we will take to address and improve the performance of our lowest performers.? We set transparent definitions around performance to ensure expectations are clear and we’re all playing by the same rules in order to see the progress we need quarter on quarter.

3. Shared Goals

Cultural change doesn’t happen overnight and a key part of our success is having all of our Elevens rowing in the same direction towards our shared goal of changing the fabric of Financial Services.? Getting an entire business prioritising and focusing on the right activities that will drive the biggest impact is no easy task, but here at 11:FS we have simplified our approach through a ritual we call 3 for 3s (343s- 11:FS’ take on OKRs).?

Simply put, we have 3 priorities for the year. Each quarter each team across the business focuses on 3 priorities that will propel us towards our annual goals and over a 3 month period, each Eleven has 3 Achievement goals that ladder up to their team’s priorities.? We all know the annual review is a thing of the past, so we encourage little and often conversations to talk about wins and any roadblocks.? At the end of the quarter, each individual is given an evaluation score based on their attitude, achievement, and development.

This 3-month outlook allows us as individuals and teams to pivot and focus our attention on the tasks that will accelerate us towards our strategy, and to course- correct where the team or individual performance isn’t meeting the level we would expect.

4. Clear Expectations

Take a look at any high-performing team and a consistent theme will be clear communication on what is expected from each role within a company, and in turn what an employee can expect from us in return.? At 11:FS we have a development framework for each team that highlights the skills, and behaviours we expect at each level and helps to fuel career development discussions.

On the flip side, often the root cause of poor performance across an organisation is a misalignment of expectations.? In most cases, this boils down to clearer communication where expectations need to be clarified in order for the individual to understand the disconnect. ? In other instances, the individual just isn't right for the business at that point in time for a variety of reasons; people's circumstances change, growth in the business, a change of business focus, or, the inability of individuals to sustain performance.? There are lots of different reasons and that's fine, it's just having an adult conversation, offering support, exploring options and acting promptly.?

5. Continuous Constructive Feedback

This year we’re focusing on building and reinforcing our feedback culture.? It’s easy to slip into an “everything is awesome” approach with your team but we believe the key to our future success is having open and honest communication with our teams.? This requires skill from both the individual delivering feedback and for the receiver to identify the intent behind the comments, build self-awareness, and see the opportunity to have a support structure to grow and learn new skills.? It’s a muscle we all have to continuously flex for this to be effective and so we are in the midst of developing a training programme to equip our Elevens with the skills and confidence they need to continue evolving our feedback culture.

The quarterly cadence of our performance cycle allows for 360 feedback but we also encourage our teams to give each other high 5s through 15Five, our performance tool as well as have face-to-face retros on key projects.? We talk a lot as a team about no surprises - light touch, regular conversations should mean there aren’t any nasty surprises when it comes to formal reviews at the end of a quarter.??

Throughout my career, this is where I have seen the biggest failing of people managers - managers, leaders or even peers get frustrated with an individual’s performance and the first question I always ask is “ are they aware of your feedback?”.? It’s amazing how many times I’ve had to remind managers to make sure they are bringing awareness of their (or others perceptions) to the employee - we can’t expect someone to improve or act on the feedback if they’re not made aware of it in the first place so creating an open and timely feedback loop is key.

6. Growth Mindset

Our core mission at 11:FS is unleashing talent and this is turbocharged by our Elevens having a growth mindset. This wouldn’t be possible without our first principle of psychological safety as we actively encourage our team members to get out of their comfort zone and focus on their own development, be curious and think about those 1% improvements to overcome hurdles to grow personally and professionally.

7. Experiment & Adapt

Finally, the sum of principles 1-6 means as a business we remain agile, open to piloting new approaches and ways of working which means we’re responding in real time to the opportunities and challenges that surround us.? I know both David and I both subscribe to the “failing forward” philosophy so as long as we’re learning lessons and not repeating past mistakes there will be endless opportunities to grow and succeed!

That’s it, no silver bullet, just hard work, good intentions, and pushing open and clear communication channels so you can celebrate the wins together, and act promptly when needing to get back on track.

Back to you David. ??

Thanks Hannah. So there you go. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well it’s not. It requires you committing to a belief system and holding yourself and everyone around you accountable to it.??

What I love about our culture at 11:FS most is that when you look at the things that we have built around the world (Mettle with Natwest, Mox with Standard Chartered, Milli with FNBO and many others) then our culture has been the kernel that those great ideas were given momentum and beyond that then great businesses were built around them.?

People think culture is fluffy, it isn't. Culture isn’t a thing; it is everything.

See you next week.

Dx