Fuelling change with authentic purpose

Helping Wealthtime discover an authentic sense of purpose to use as a powerful driver for change, across a three month programme.

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About Wealthtime

Following private equity investment and a recent merger, UK financial services company, Wealthtime (formerly Novia), had entered an exciting new phase – one that came with huge opportunities, but also a high degree of change and disruption to the company’s status quo. With big, bold ambitions for growth, their executive team saw defining a clear, distinctive purpose as a strategic imperative to move the organisation forward.

To achieve this, Wealthtime turned to &us to uncover an authentic sense of purpose and create a set of actionable, tangible behaviours that would act as a powerful enabler for change.

Uncovering authentic purpose

With so much change on the horizon, the executive team were committed to preparing their people for the fast pace ahead – equipping them with tools to navigate the change, and to thrive within it.

Hindering this was a cultural legacy of division across internal departments - each a distinctly different ‘tribe’ with its own language, values and behavioural norms. While these had their merits, it also created siloes that created division, and made driving the necessary change almost impossible.

Wealthtime also had to consider a complex mix of external stakeholders, including:

  • A client community of over 10,000 independent financial advisors

  • The private equity firm that had invested in Wealthtime’s future

It was vital that the final expression of the work was received by both their people and their stakeholder communities as authentic and real – a compelling point of view that would set them apart in a crowded market and act as a North Star for future growth.

 

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Team brainstorming session at Wealthtime
Wealthtime employees coming up with new ideas on post-it notes

“We might be a financial services company, but ultimately it’s a people business. We have a big responsibility to our clients – the people we serve –  we hold their savings for their futures, and we employ just over 300 people, who are our business.”

Patrick Mill, CEO, Wealthtime

A collaborative process

Rather than position ourselves as the visionary creatives leading the work, it was incredibly important to demonstrate a servant leadership approach – putting the Wealthtime team front and centre. Not only was this important for generating buy-in, it was also crucial for ensuring the work felt true to the organisation and genuinely owned by its people.

The collaborative process &us and Wealthtime went through together
Lucy Campbell from Wealthtime discussing the work she did with &us
Reflections on working with &us
Lucy Campbell, Product and Analysis Lead, Wealthtime

Instead of recruiting for ‘experts’ or prominent senior leaders to own the work internally, &us deliberately sourced a volunteer team from across Wealthtime with strong interpersonal networks that spanned departmental and cultural boundaries. These individuals are the hidden power in any organisation: the people that really know what’s going on, irrespective of their seniority, skillset or tenure.

&us supported this hard-working internal team to work across Wealthtime’s network ecosystem to uncover what was really important to its people. The working group experimented early and often – testing ideas rather than relying on assumptions – and gathering invaluable feedback to better understand the true essence of the organisation. 

Whilst building Wealthtime’s insight-gathering capabilities, &us crafted the narrative that defines its purpose and supporting behaviours today. We also supported the team as they designed a comprehensive engagement plan, detailing how to embed the purpose and behaviours across the organisation at all levels.

“We really see our purpose and values as deeply strategic cornerstones that shape who we are – from the way we work, to the business decisions we take. They also act as a crucial compass during times of change. It was important to us that whatever we defined was therefore genuinely authentic and something our people could rally behind. What stood out about &us was their ability not to tell us what our purpose and values were, but rather to work alongside us in cross-functional groups to help us uncover and articulate what we really stand for. Their approach is playful, but challenging: they pushed back on assumptions, and encouraged us to test and validate our thinking at every stage. The end result was an impactful, authentic piece of work led and driven by our own people – expertly enabled and supported by &us.”

Vicki Baker, Chief People Officer

Key outcomes

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An authentic, purposeful heart

At the end of our journey together, the joint team had produced a purpose statement and set of specific, actionable behaviours that continue to fuel Wealthtime’s growth ambitions today as it now supports over 72,000 clients.

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A people-driven movement

Both the executive and programme team developed a mature understanding of the new purpose and behaviours, and worked hard to socialise the work across Wealthtime – building impressive momentum for the organisation’s cultural transformation.

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An aligned ecosystem

After the initial phase of work, &us began a further six month programme that included a series of projects designed to rewire key structures so that they reflected its new, purposeful direction – starting with employee experience, corporate social responsibility, and training and development.

 

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