Developing and maintaining a culture to deliver a sustainable future.

5 September 2022

by Jonathan Neale, Chairman, Filtronic

Organisational culture is complex, well researched and important but quite difficult to define. Culture in organisations unites and organises us. It is shaped by our beliefs, our values and our behaviours and impacts how we see the world and how we respond to it. However, because organisations are often built and organised around work tasks or particular skill-sets, an inevitable consequence is that these ‘sub-teams’ sometimes have distinct norms or patterns of behaviours. As such organisational culture is not uniform throughout the business. Neither is culture something static. It is more like the operating system of a computer that helps guide what the business does and how it responds to internal and external situations. Although culture is hard to define, it is often evident in the everyday, for example the conversations we have or perhaps, and importantly, the ones we don’t have.     

Developing and aligning a culture to support better teamwork, creativity, innovation, and problem solving as well as being able to handle conflict inside organisations requires deft skills in leadership with equal emphasis from the Board to first line supervision and team leaders. As we strive for high performance and greater diversity in our teams it follows that we may experience conflict of ideas and greater challenge to our thinking. This is not just a consequence of difference; it is an important element of high performing teams. Difference or ‘heat’ brings change.

To be successful a business must pay attention to what matters both inside the business and, importantly, outside the business’s ever-changing markets, economies, and customer expectations. This is not just a reactive process it requires foresight and horizon scanning to try and anticipate what opportunity or impact is next. If we want to effect change, we need to adapt the culture. If we want to change the culture, we need to change the conversations we have and pay attention to what matters. Getting what matters, and what we must pay attention to on the agenda is not always easy but is greatly supported by diversity.  

The number one objective of the management team at Filtronic is to create a climate for success, and are redoubling our efforts in this area. In the last twelve months, we have prioritised talent recruitment, retention and development.  Our long-term vision and strategy focuses on sustainable growth in exciting and important markets such as aerospace, defence, space and telecommunications.  

Delivering a sustainable future for Filtronic requires focus on three critical areas:

  1. Commercial sustainability. This needs agility and adaptability as markets, technologies and customer requirements change and evolve. Our goal is to remain relevant to our customers and to grow and attract new business by being an RF technology leader, one that continually drives innovation over the long term.

  2. A sustainable organisational plan. Recruiting diverse talent and providing meaningful work and purpose. Our people are a real point of difference for Filtronic. We value diversity, inclusion and development.

  3. A sustainable environmental strategy. We recognise the threat of climate change and our potential impact on the scarcity of resources and the need to reduce our environmental impact on land, in water and in the air.

A framework that works for us at Filtronic, is close alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This ensures our Environmental Social and Governance goals are tailored for our business and drive us towards a sustainable and successful future. We believe that by building a high-performing culture, we generate good local jobs and drive economic growth. It also ensures we use innovation as a pathway to a long-term future.

Better communication technologies are essential to reducing local, regional and national inequalities. Closing the digital divide creates sustainable communities that prosper through greater connectivity and information access, it improves efficiencies, well-being, and ultimately the quality of life.

Find out more about Filtronic’s capabilities:

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