Pausing to Move Forward: The Power of a Culture Reset After Change
For many public sector teams, change is no longer an event with a beginning and an end. It has become the weather. Restructures, mergers, new operating models and shifting priorities have followed one another with little room to breathe. The question is no longer whether teams can cope with change, but what it has quietly done to them along the way.
When change becomes the norm
Across the NHS, integrated care systems, local government and the wider public sector, many teams have spent years in a state of near-constant transition. Structures are redrawn, roles are realigned and teams change as some colleagues leave and others join. Each change may be well intentioned and planned, but it can still have an impact. Taken together, and sustained over a long period, they create something harder to see on an organisational chart: fatigue, uncertainty, and a slow erosion of the shared purpose and trust that make teams work.
Teams in this position often keep delivering. But they do so on reserves of goodwill that are running down, with old ways of working carried into new structures and unspoken questions left hanging: What is expected of us now? Who are we as a team? Do we still share the same values?
What the research tells us
William Bridges’ work on transition makes an important distinction. Change is situational: the new structure, the new team, the new line manager. Transition is psychological: the inner process people go through to let go of the old and commit to the new. Organisations tend to manage the change and neglect the transition, leaving teams stuck in what Bridges called the “neutral zone,” where the old way has ended but the new one has not yet taken hold.
Research on change fatigue and change cynicism shows that repeated, poorly processed change reduces trust in leaders, lowers commitment, and makes people less willing to invest in the next initiative. Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety adds that prolonged uncertainty makes people more cautious about speaking up, raising concerns, or admitting mistakes, precisely the behaviours that learning and improvement depend upon.
In health and care, Professor Michael West’s research is especially relevant. It shows that genuine teams, with clear shared objectives, clarity of roles and regular time to reflect on how they are working, are associated with better outcomes for patients and staff, while “pseudo-teams” that lack these features are linked to higher error rates and poorer wellbeing. His work with The King’s Fund has also linked staff engagement with organisational performance and quality of care.
Finally, studies of structured reflection, including research from Harvard Business School, found that people who took short, regular time to reflect on what they had learned performed significantly better than those who simply carried on working. Reflection is not a luxury that competes with delivery; it is part of how performance improves.
More than values: a whole team reset
Refreshing values and behaviours matters, but on its own it is not enough. A reset is an organisational development intervention in its own right: an opportunity to step back and redesign how the team will work, what it is aiming for and how it will get there. Goal-setting research by Locke and Latham consistently shows that clear, shared, and challenging goals improve performance, and West’s work highlights “reflexivity,” a team’s habit of regularly reviewing its objectives and methods, as a hallmark of effective teams. A good reset builds both.
What a reset looks like in practice
Over recent months we have been commissioned to design and facilitate three reset programmes for public sector teams emerging from extended periods of change and realignment. Each was tailored to its context, but all created protected time to:
Pause and learn from the past: acknowledge honestly what the team has been through, and reflect on what worked, what did not and what to carry forward or leave behind.
Reset purpose, objectives, and goals: agree what the team is now for, its priorities and the shared objectives it will be measured against, for the team as it is now rather than as it used to be.
Establish new ways of working: redesign how the team meets, makes decisions, communicates, shares workload, and collaborates with partners across the wider system.
Refresh values and behaviours: agree the culture needed to move forward and what each person commits to.
Plan the way forward: turn agreements into clear actions, owners, milestones, and review points, so the reset becomes a new starting point rather than a one-off event.
The feedback has been consistent. When we asked participants at the end of the workshops to sum up the day in a word or a phrase, these are some of the answers they gave:
“Inspiring” • “Reflective” • “Listened to” • “Time well used” • “Valuable” • “Insightful” • “Thought-provoking” • “Energising” • “Re-motivating.”
Teams described feeling heard, re-energised and clearer about direction and expectations. Leaders valued seeing issues surface in a safe, structured space, and left with objectives and working arrangements the team had built and therefore owned.
Why it is best practice, and worth the investment.
When teams are brought together or realigned, it is tempting to assume that culture, roles, and ways of working will settle once the new structure is in place. The evidence suggests otherwise. Without deliberate attention, old habits persist, sub-groups form along former lines, objectives stay unclear and unresolved tensions resurface as conflict, duplication, disengagement, sickness absence, and turnover. Each carries a real cost, financial and human, that far exceeds the cost of a well-designed reset.
A reset is organisational development best practice for teams that have undergone significant realignment. It transforms people who share a structure into a cohesive team with a common purpose, clear goals, and agreed ways of working. It also restores the psychological safety needed for honest discussion and improvement, while giving leaders a co-produced foundation for setting objectives, managing performance and measuring progress.
In a public sector facing continued financial pressure, rising demand and further reorganisation, the instinct may be to keep moving. Our experience, and the research, tell us that the teams best able to move forward are those given the time to stop, reflect and reset first.
360 Degree Society supports public sector organisations with leadership development, culture, and transformational change.
To talk about how a reset could support your team, get in touch. We can offer a free confidential conversation where we can talk about your culture reset.
References
Bridges, W. and Bridges, S. (2017) Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Revised 4th edn. London: John Murray Business.
de Vries, M.S.E. and de Vries, M.S. (2023) ‘Repetitive reorganizations, uncertainty and change fatigue’, Public Money & Management, 43(2), pp. 126–135. doi: 10.1080/09540962.2021.1905258.
Edmondson, A.C. and Lei, Z. (2014) ‘Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, pp. 23–43. doi: 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305.
Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. (2002) ‘Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey’, American Psychologist, 57(9), pp. 705–717. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705.
Ouedraogo, N. and Ouakouak, M.L. (2021) ‘Antecedents and outcome of employee change fatigue and change cynicism’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 34(1), pp. 158–179. doi: 10.1108/JOCM-05-2019-0141.
West, M.A. and Markiewicz, L. (2016) ‘Effective team working in health care’, in Ferlie, E., Montgomery, K. and Pedersen, A.R. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Health Care Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G.P. and Staats, B.R. (2014) Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance. Harvard Business School Working Paper 14-093.