One Team in Practice
Our purpose, our norms and our brand — and what they ask of us.
- Our purpose
- Our six norms
- Our brand — the seven
Agreed by the leadership team across four workshops.
- How we interpret them
- How we use them in practice
- What the team wants to focus on improving over the next 6 months
We're not reopening them — we're building on them.
Anything we can't get to today
Scan any time. It stays open for the whole session.
- Every entry goes into the leadership pack
- Nothing gets discarded
- You'll hear back within four weeks
menti.com/ale3hvdm31cz
How we got here
Four workshops, and what came out of them.
Your leadership team built this
Understand the system
Merger pressures, team dynamics, interviews across the function.
Our Anchors
Team Diagnostic Survey results, and the purpose they shaped.
Draft the norms
How we behave with each other, in our own words.
Build the brand
How we want stakeholders to experience us.
Argued out, in this function, by people in this room.
What the experience
was like
Two or three members of the leadership team, ninety seconds each.
Why bother with any of this?
Three findings. Each one is the reason a different piece exists.
A university call centre. Staff phoned alumni asking for donations.
Five minutes with a student whose scholarship that money had paid for.
more raised, a month later.
The script, the call lists and the people were all the same.
When people can picture who the work is for, the work gets better.
Every team already has norms.
The only question is whether you chose them, or inherited them.
Norms of conduct are part of a team's enabling structure — the design of how a team works. Research on team effectiveness puts more weight on that design than on anything a leader does in the moment.
Amy Edmondson studied nursing units in several hospitals, expecting the best-run teams to make the fewest mistakes.
The better-run units reported more errors — not because they made more, but because it was safe to admit them.
“If you make a mistake here, it won't be held against you.”
Ours are No Surprises! and Respectful Dialogue — and they only work together.
A brand is what people outside the team experience.
Not what we say about ourselves — what people get from us, every time.
Their Three Steps of Service — a warm welcome using your name, anticipating what you need, and a fond farewell — is the guest's experience.
That is their brand: the standard a guest can count on, wherever they are.
Purpose and norms are ours to set. Brand is theirs to judge.
The Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards
| The Credo “genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission” | Why we exist | Our purpose |
| The Employee Promise trust, honesty, respect, integrity and commitment — between staff | How we treat each other | Our six norms |
| Three Steps of Service greet by name · anticipate · fond farewell | What the guest experiences | Our brand |
“We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”
The first half is how they treat each other. The second half is what the guest gets.
Why we exist
One statement that orients and energises the team, and does not change.
How we treat each other
Six of them, describing observable behaviour inside the team.
How stakeholders experience us
Seven of them, and the people outside decide whether we are getting it right.
A function can be excellent to work in and still be difficult to deal with, and both have to be designed.
We strengthen the health, safety and quality culture, capability and governance of SRLA and its delivery partners so that the community trust us to deliver the project safely. Together, this supports safe delivery and quality outcomes across the program, helping achieve rail day one with safe, reliable infrastructure built to last.
Our direction — it says why our work matters
- Step Up for Others
Give the time to support others in their work when you are needed. - Engage with Purpose
Actively listen and contribute to convey issues and develop practical solutions.
- Respectful Dialogue
Focus on the issue, not the individual, and work together toward practical solutions. - No Surprises!
Share bad news or risks as soon as you know them — don't let us be blindsided.
- Deliver or Re-negotiate
Take ownership of your commitments: complete actions on time, or renegotiate priorities and due dates early, before they lapse. - Deliver Together
Factor in others' core responsibilities and priorities when requesting support.
A trusted partner
A partner and advisor, not just a service provider.
Visible and accessible
Seen and present — and there when they need us.
Focused on what matters
Guided by clear strategic intent.
Accountable for our work
We own our decisions and stand behind our quality.
Proactive
In early, flagging problems before they escalate.
Consistent and capable
Consistent, competent work backed by expertise.
Collaborative and flexible
We ask the right questions and adapt as needs change.
Two views of one function
Which of these is about us, and which is about them?
Sort every card
How we work with each other
What people experience of us
- Split your table in two — each half takes a mat and its own set of cards
- Every card goes inside or outside
- If you can't agree, put it on the line
Six minutes
Now pick one card
Show the other half your line cards
Talk through why they were hard to place
Agree the one card your table most wants answered
Read out your card. Hands up — inside or outside?
We'll give you the answer, and the reason.
Who judges it?
Someone inside the team
→ it's a norm
Someone outside the team
→ it's part of our brand
How we treat each other and what our partners experience of us happen at the same time.
Not one then the other — both are in play in every piece of work, and together they decide how it gets done.
Norms under pressure
One situation. Every table. Four questions.
The finding that
lands late
It's on the worksheet in front of you.
Listen first — we'll read it to you.
What do our norms require of us here, inside the team?e.g. tell the reviewer the clock is running and agree a date.
What should the delivery partner experience of us here?e.g. one clear answer on the closeout, not silence then a reversal.
What would get in the way, in real conditions?e.g. two audits due the same week, and no owner for the deadline.
Then talk · sixteen minutes total
One person called out the eleven-day delay and said this is exactly the gap our norms are meant to prevent. The other — who had been reviewing the finding — heard it as being blamed, in front of colleagues, for a decision made in good faith, with two audits already on their plate.
Both believe they were doing exactly what
Respectful Dialogue asks of them.
What now? One resolution, one post-it.
You just answered the same question three different ways.
Every table used the same norms and still landed in different places. Agreeing the words is the easy part. Using them the same way, under pressure, takes practice — and that is why these norms belong to the whole team, not only the leaders who wrote them.
Six months from now
One question. Everyone answers.
What do we want to be true for HSQ in six months that isn't true today?
Scan to answer
- Take three minutes on your own first
- One idea per response
- Prefer not to scan? Open menti.com and enter the code on screen
menti.com/aluvffpw8re7
What the room said
In your words, not ours.
All six norms and all seven parts of our brand are expected of everyone. This isn't a menu.
This is about where you start — and what you personally think matters most.
Which one norm, or part of our brand, do you think will make the biggest difference to whether HSQ succeeds over the next six months?
Where, specifically, will you practise it in the next fortnight?Name the meeting, the conversation or the decision.
Where this goes
- The wall, the channel and your table sheets
All of it is captured before we leave the room. - A summary pack to HSQ leadership
Clustered, honest, and including what came through the anonymous channel. - You hear back by Tuesday 29 September
Four weeks from today.