Leading cultural change at an international home improvement company

How I facilitated the creation of values that brought together the new and existing parts of the business.

Photo by Karl Solano on Unsplash

Kingfisher, a leading home improvement company with brands like B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Depôt and Castorama, established the Kingfisher Digital Hub, a new innovation unit made up of several different companies and a total of 350 people.

The vision was to create new digital and blended services to make DIY accessible to all. The GoodHome brand became the continuation of these efforts.

My Role

With rapid growth and evolving teams, I saw the opportunity to create a solid foundation that could guide us.

As a design research leader, I took the initiative to lead the creation of values.

“I am continually impressed by your ability to be simultaneously the realistic voice of reason, while also pushing potentials and future scenarios.”
— Someone I managed

The problem

We had talented, enthusiastic people, who wanted to do meaningful work. However, we lacked a shared cultural foundation and a shared way to make decisions. This led to confusion, a lack of transparency and missed opportunities for collaboration.

What we did

I led a team of talented designers through the collaborative creation of values.
We explored:

  • what makes a good home?

  • what are the values of the companies that make up the Hub?

  • what values do other prominent design-led companies have?

  • what do we want to preserve and what should we stop?

A powerful metaphor emerged: ‘our Hub as a home.’

We then:

  • mapped emerging values into clear clusters

  • tested how well they worked and refined language in peer sessions involving the whole Hub, supported by our HR colleagues

The resulting values

  • Together: believe in people first. We celebrate openness, honesty and diversity.

  • Excellence: be proud of what we do. We strive to never be satisfied.  

  • Curiousity: challenge assumptions. We improve and grow through brave experimentation.  

  • Humility: value truth. We are always open to listen and learn. 

  • Simplicity: do more with less. We are sustainable and responsible.

Impact

These values tapped into the creativity of the next generation of designers and gave them a voice.

They built on what made the Hub special and gave teams a shared language for collaboration and decision-making.

Teams began referencing the values in their day-to-day practice—from user research to how they planned sprints and supported each other emotionally.

“We’ve had so much more visibility and are now being recognised as being a critical part of the process. This is reflected in our work and team performance. The senior members in the Hub have responded really well to our work”
— Someone I managed

Reflection

My role as a leader and a facilitator unlocked collective wisdom and creativity whilst building team confidence.

Rather than imposing change, involving the next generation of designers in strategic conversations gave them a voice in creating their cultural foundation. This generated stronger commitment and created a better overall outcome.

This experience taught me that my role as a leader is to create the conditions where talented people could contribute their best thinking.

There is a clear business rationale for values-driven leadership: I saw firsthand how clear values eliminated the inefficiencies and improved decisions.

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