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Asking teams to consider why they exist and which paths they take when things get tough has helped transform a culture once described as "stale", the organisation's managing director says.

In 2017, water and sewerage services company Barwon Water used employee focus groups to determine how workers perceived the company's culture, says managing director Tracey Slatter.

Then, she asked employees to describe the culture they hoped to see in the future.

"I was really pleased to see that there's an appetite for change in the organisation, and I used that appetite to design both the culture and strategy journey with them," she told the recent Human Synergistics conference.

And that appetite didn't change when the pandemic began, Slatter says, noting that Barwon Water did not put its culture transformation journey on hold...