Founding partners of rapidly scaling management consultancy Q5 talk to us about the secrets of maintaining their unique workplace culture
We sat down with two of Q5’s founding partners Sharon Rice Oxley and Chris Parsons to talk about how Q5 has maintained its culture while growing rapidly. We love the occasional long-form read (well, Jules definitely does – it’s hard to get his nose out of The New Yorker on the weekends!) so we are indulging ourselves, and you, with our interview word for word. Essential reading for CPOs and those responsible for employer brand and talent acquisition. Here goes…
We are The Loves: Back in the beginning, at what stage did you feel you needed to define Q5's values and set out what you stood for? At what point does your culture become more than just the founding partners' ways of working?
SO: For me culture is an outcome of all of the micro behaviours and actions that we take. That's how I've approached the last 15 years when I think about how we want our culture to be. First and foremost, it’s about how am I going to behave as a leader?
CP: At the beginning, we thought hard about how we wanted our consulting company to be. We didn’t set it down in writing right away, but back in 2009 when we were planning, I think if any one of us had felt that our individual value set wasn't aligned, then we wouldn't have stepped into it. So I think I think it came that the reason the five of us gelled was that we had similar values.
Our current set of values were put together in about year three, at one of our first away days. We made them explicit for the first time. And the values we have now are really a product of those first three years. If we had done them on day one they would have been different because they were based on how we had we had grown as a group. It couldn't have been done to us - it had to come through and organic sort of process that we bought together.
And then over the time we've created a capability framework, and we've written down ‘The Tree’ which is our career progression, and most recently ‘The Manual’ which is about how do we do things around here.
One of Olly’s (Q5 Managing Partner, Olly Purnell) real strengths is the attention and care that he takes tone of voice and making sure that it's real and human and not corporate and bland – that would be a word that we would hate to associate with Q5. So I think that has been a learning for us. How much do you write down and when do you write it down?
We are The Loves: What have you put in place to ensured that culture has been maintained as the company started to grow rapidly? How do people know what is Q5's ‘way of doing things’? How do you communicate Q5's values and beliefs to new employees?
SO: The whole Q5 journey and story has been one of growth. You know, in the first year we were five founders and we hired 2 people, in the second year we doubled in size and in the third year we tripled. So it's always been about growth. In professional services, I truly believe that you do have to keep growing and changing to keep people excited and interested and to be able to deliver what they what they want for their careers.
So what we've had to learn over the years is to make what is implicit explicit. And that means writing it down. And when you write it down, you codify it, which is hard. So that's probably been one of the harder things. Because as soon as it's written down, it becomes a checklist or it becomes law. So for me, that's been the tension between writing it down and trying to create as much choice for people in our system as possible. Because I truly believe that when you can align company need and business need with individual need, that's when the magic happens.
We are The Loves: How do you feel Q5's culture has adapted as people expectations of employers have changed over the last few years?
CP: Your culture never stays static. Your culture evolves all the time and we say that to people when they come in. We’ve been around 15 years, and things have changed about what people want from work, how they react to work, so the values have to change for that. We try to give a good marker for people about what's expected and what's not expected of them. But within that there's a lot of room, and that's really important.
SO: One of our values is about bringing your true self to work. So if you're bringing your true self to work, then you are going to nudge the Q5 culture a little bit.
We are The Loves: What have you put in place to ensured that culture has been maintained as the company started to grow rapidly? How do people know what is Q5's "way of doing things"? How do you communicate Q5's values and beliefs to new employees?
CP: Our culture and values are explicitly written into our recruitment materials. And when they apply they go through a set of games and our values are set within this. So it gives us the opportunity to assess where people are, and when they are going into the interviews we know which ones to test. Then they are exposed to them when they come to an assessment center. So it's very much part of the process.
Then in their induction, it's a light touch, it's not rammed down people's throats. It’s more about what they experience than what they are told. How they’re managed on projects, their mentoring and development, etc.
SO: I think that's really important. You've always got to have that alignment between the espoused values and how you’re really operating. For experienced hires it can be tough joining Q5, when you have learned your craft in a different culture.
It's easier early on in your career when you’re less experienced - it is easier to adopt a culture. We need to work harder at supporting our experienced hires as they have a huge part to play in our growth.
CP: We have recruited people based on value set more than capability in the past, and that's something I think we've learned over time is that it's not just who you are, it’s also about the technical skills. So, you can't be blindsided by someone who is just a cultural fit but not a capability fit. Equally we occasionally recruited people based on capability and if they've not hit the value set, there's always been a bit of friction.
We are The Loves: As you've expanded geographically, has it been challenging to create a sense of belonging and shared purpose across the offices? How have you balanced the need for a common culture while remaining flexible to the nuances of local markets?
CP: It’s important that all Q5ers share our values and those are core to the culture of each of our offices. But the feel of each office will be different within that framework of our values. It depends on the leadership of the office and our different offices operate in different jurisdictions, different cultural settings. So how the Q5 culture is manifested isn’t exactly the same in every office.
We are The Loves: Finally, how do you communicate your culture externally to attract talent and make it a USP of working at Q5?
SO: We have things like the wonderful video that we've done where we want to tell the story of what it's like to work here. I think there's real strength in that as an attraction tool because it is a crowded market, and we are competing against some big firms, small consultancies and in-house roles…
The video makes some of what is implicit, and we know internally, explicit for others to see. And it’s vital that the external perception of an organisation matches the internal experience – you can’t do one without the other – it must be authentic.
The video We are The Loves made for us totally works. It works brilliantly because of your technical experience of filming and producing it, but it only really works because that's how the lived experience of Q5 is. You weren't asking anyone featured in the film to play out of type, they were bringing themselves to work in the way that they described it. And that's really important because the alignment between the internal values and the external perception and actually how people work was really tight.
Sharon Rice Oxley, Founder and Partner, Q5
Chris Parsons, Founder and Partner, Q5
“One of Olly’s (Q5 Managing Partner, Olly Purnell) real strengths is the attention and care that he takes tone of voice and making sure that it's real and human and not corporate and bland”
- Chris Parsons
“I truly believe that when you can align company need and business need with individual need, that's when the magic happens.”
- Sharon Rice Oxley
“The wonderful video that we've done where we want to tell the story of what it's like to work here.”
- Sharon Rice Oxley
Life at Q5 film made by We are The Loves
