The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is a cornerstone of cultural enrichment, fostering connections between art and community. Central to this mission is the Education Team, a small but wide-reaching department delivering up to 2,000 programs annually across three clusters: Families, Youth and Schools; Adult Programs; and Community Engagement. Their remit is to inspire audiences and raise awareness of initiatives that broaden accessibility to art and culture.

Emerging from the pandemic, the museum naturally found itself re-examining its connection with visitors and the wider community – a shift that prompted the Education Team to embark on their own transformation. To align with the museum’s evolving identity, they set out to reset their team culture: enhancing collaboration, encouraging creativity, and aligning on shared values that would guide their work.

To achieve these goals, the DMA Education Team partnered with Bracket on a bespoke 8-month culture reset program that would improve team culture and cohesion, creating the conditions to further enhance the visibility and effectiveness of their already high-quality outputs. The program focused on three key areas:

• Creating shared values to better support alignment and building a clear vision for the team’s work in the context of the museum’s wider transformation;
• Developing frameworks that encourage better collaboration across the Education Team’s three clusters: Families, Youth and Schools; Adult Programs; and Community Engagement;
• Equipping the team with the creative and strategic tools and mindset to confidently navigate change.

The program kicked off with Bracket’s diagnostic, followed by a series of team sessions to assess the current culture and identify opportunities for improvement. These highlighted key strengths such as team cohesion and output quality, as well as improvement areas like fostering more intentional communication methods.

This was followed by a full-day, in-person workshop designed to build a unified vision and set of shared values, as well as an opportunity to explore collaboration as a team. Program highlights included:

• Visioning: Creative exercises and interactive brainstorming techniques to inspire aspirational thinking; helping the team articulate a shared vision focused on accessibility, innovation, and meaningful connections.
• Building shared values: The team co-created six guiding principles to shape decision-making and behaviours, ensuring accountability and alignment.
• Program streamlining: Identifying ways to adapt or enhance initiatives to align with their collective vision and values.

The program encouraged the Education Team to turn their creative energies inward, applying the same innovative mindset they use with visitors to strengthen their own team dynamics. Each shared value they created included both internal and external statements, helping to keep them accountable as a team, and with their visitors. This approach unlocked new collaborative pathways and fostered a more creative, playful team culture.

Throughout the program, Bracket provided ongoing support through follow-up sessions and regular check-ins to ensure the team sustained momentum and successfully embedded these cultural changes into daily work.

Enterprise Mobility, the group responsible for the globally successful Rent-A-Car brand, employs more than 100,000 people in over 90 countries. Renowned for its existing, strong culture, Enterprise has become synonymous with excellent customer service and employee career journeys.

The Group HR Manager team is made up of leaders who share a similar role but do not collaborate traditionally or actively deliver projects together on a regular basis, but rather come together to share knowledge and best practice.

Whilst scoring highly in Bracket’s pre-programme team culture survey, the pandemic had naturally led to a shift in priorities, placing a greater emphasis on supporting employees. Following this period of change, Leigh Lafayer-Ayer, HR Director UK and Ireland, recognised the importance of aligning the team around a proactive and emergent strategy, while repositioning leaders as forward-thinking ‘strategic partners’ with freedom to think creatively again. To initiate this cultural reset and kickstart their journey into a new post-pandemic era, the team partnered with Bracket.

Looking to embark upon a comprehensive evaluation of their culture and explore future opportunities for growth and improvement, Enterprise Mobility connected with Bracket. As an experienced facilitator, Leigh saw that Bracket was the ideal partner to lead their people through change, support creativity, and guide their team culture reset.

Following a team survey and 1:1 interviews, Bracket kicked-off the bespoke Programme with an immersive half-day alignment workshop. This workshop served as an opportunity to audit the existing culture, examine the shifting business landscape, and assess how the role of the Group HR Manager team had evolved. Together, we explored how these changes had affected people, process, technology, and the broader business and global frameworks. This provided a foundation for the team to reset their approach and future-proof for upcoming changes.

As a visioning exercise, this initial workshop acted as a creative and strategic springboard for the subsequent online facilitation sessions of the Programme. The following sessions would go on to foster deeper connections among the team, identify habits, exchange ideas, and commit to seeking inspiration from wider networks and research. During the Team Culture Programme, Bracket worked with Enterprise to:

• Align the team around a clearer understanding of strengths and post-pandemic opportunity areas to take the team to another level.
• Build connections as a global team by enhancing collaboration and knowledge-sharing, and unifying how the group supports other teams and directors across the business.
• Establish a collective plan for learning and development in order to inspire confident leadership, and ensure the team feels a sense of priority and investment in their future growth.
• Explore how the team responds to change and future opportunities, in order to support the wider organisation as effectively as possible, and move the group forward at pace.

The Digital Engagement Team at Wellcome Collection is charged with designing and building a free and unrestricted digital space where people are inspired, challenged, and can engage with the important work the museum is undertaking. Their remit above all else is accessibility. 

While the organisation is deeply aligned on their common purpose – supporting science to solve the urgent health challenges faced by everyone – the Digital Engagement Team had undergone some management changes. With the addition of new members and a leadership who had not met together as a team before, their focus was on regrouping and resetting to ensure all voices were being heard.

Leadership had recognised a need for team communication training, but in light of these management changes realised a cultural reset was critical. Looking to nurture healthier habits and establish meaningful relationships that would support greater cohesion, collaboration, and open communication, the Digital Engagement Team partnered with Bracket.

Bracket conducted an anonymised team-wide survey and 1:1 interviews with Team Leaders to diagnose and identify the most effective approach for the facilitation. Spanning three months, the bespoke Team Communication Training Programme would include workshops for both Team Leaders and the wider team. Through these separate workshops, Bracket ensured that Team Leaders could strengthen connections within their own network, while empowering the wider team to share ideas and speak up without the presence of their managers.

As the new group of Team Leaders had not met in this way before, the workshop focused on familiarising colleagues and establishing ground rules for effective leadership. The session facilitated open discussions on navigating uncertainty and leveraging peer support. Team Leaders were encouraged to reflect on their communication styles, how they designed and facilitated meetings, and their approach to giving feedback and initiating difficult conversations. 

The wider team workshop introduced the importance of curiosity, so that members could explore new opportunities, establish guidelines for better collaboration, and make individual commitments to initiate better ways of working.

During the Programme, Bracket worked with Wellcome Collection to:

• Develop the communication skills needed to better relate to one other, facilitate discussions, and create a more collaborative and productive environment.
• Develop listening skills and improve peer support across the team to foster a more empathetic and supportive environment.
• Bolster the team’s self-awareness and interpersonal skills to encourage active contribution and engagement in meetings.
• Coach leadership in the facilitation skills that create a safe environment where all colleagues can contribute equally and be heard.
• Build confidence and ensure that everyone feels comfortable to speak up, share challenges, and hold difficult conversations.

It champions more effective and sustainable marketing communications, creating a global network of major brands and advertiser associations in 60+ markets and offering unparalleled leadership and expertise to its members. Founded 70 years ago, the WFA has experienced rapid growth in recent years, evolving from a small, impactful team to over 30 employees with global offices in Brussels, London, Canada, and Singapore. 

Recognising the need to capture and preserve the success of their unique culture while accommodating their expanding team, the WFA partnered with Bracket to codify their existing culture and articulate their core company values. The aim was to establish a clear cultural framework for future growth and recruitment, and set intentionality around how this is maintained and developed for their future so that they could incorporate these values into all aspects of onboarding, training, and team development.

Bracket designed a bespoke programme of workshops and consultancy that complemented the WFA’s global team and their regular team gatherings. The engagement consisted of three workshops, held in Brussels and London, as well as virtually. These sessions aimed to reconnect the global team, foster a culture of idea-sharing around the purpose and values of the WFA mission, and strategise how best to embed this work in the everyday. Between sessions, Bracket ensured the engagement was as iterative and responsive as possible, adapting the work to the needs and current context of the business. Following on from the programme, Bracket was further engaged in formalising the vision, values, and wider mission for internal and external use.

During the workshops Bracket worked to:

• Facilitate discussions across the global team, and generate ideas around the core values that define WFA’s uniqueness.
• Strategically align the management team, refining the company values in line with long-term business direction, goals, and vision. 
• Support the team with the tools, structures, and framework to integrate these values within the day-to-day operations of the WFA.

During the pandemic, the company grew rapidly, expanding their London, NYC, and Amsterdam offices. Intermission wanted to take an intentional approach to building and sustaining company culture following this period of change, seeking to protect their creativity and vision, while pursuing an ambitious future for the company. Intermission Film partnered with Bracket to develop a unified identity and leadership approach, and empower the Senior Team to form stronger connections in preparation for this next level of leadership.

With extensive experience in the creative industries, Bracket designed a tailored 8-month Team Culture Programme that aimed to identify opportunities for improvement, build clarity around the company’s direction and desired culture, and explore better ways of working through team collaboration and communication. The Programme sought to answer a unique question:

Bracket started by reviewing Intermission’s existing culture and collaboration, conducting surveys and 1:1 interviews which identified opportunities and formed the foundation for the Programme. Following a kick-off alignment workshop which focused on the company strategy and leadership approach, Bracket then conducted monthly workshops and coaching sessions to further develop connections in the Senior Team. During these facilitated sessions, Bracket worked with Intermission Film to:

• Create space and value in connecting strategically with other leaders away from the pressures of operational client work.
• Understand working styles and explore how to build team collaboration and cohesion.
• Explore techniques for team facilitation and effective meetings that would encourage creativity, open communication, and psychological safety across the company.
• Develop leadership methods to ensure collaboration and curiosity are embedded throughout the organisation.