Sandbox is a performance consulting firm that strongly emphasizes people and culture to drive sustainable business performance. Consulting to a diverse portfolio of clientele both global and local, including Fortune 500 corporates, the company stands in its niche. In this interview with Angelo De Silva, Founder and MD of Sandbox, we delve into the company’s core belief system that people power performances.
Give us a brief introduction to Sandbox and how you came up with the name.
Sandbox is a performance consulting company that enhances sustainable business performance by focusing on people and culture within organizations.
At Sandbox, we redefine performance consulting by putting a laser focus on the most crucial asset of any organization: its people. As we approach our 10th anniversary, our journey has been nothing short of transformative. We’ve had the privilege of partnering with over 20% of Sri Lanka’s top-listed companies and a notable segment of the Fortune 500, a testament to our unique position in the consulting landscape.
Our philosophy is simple yet profound: ‘People Power Performance’. This isn’t just a tagline; it’s the core of our approach. We believe that the key to sustainable business success lies in nurturing potential through your greatest asset; your people, and fostering a culture that champions collective growth. This people-centric approach has been our driving force and differentiator in the realm of performance consulting.
Tell us about your CSP™ principle.
At Sandbox, The CSP™ Framework is our proprietary approach to unlocking performance. Culture, structure, and people—shape everything we undertake. We operate on a philosophy, an ethos, where we recognize that an organization’s performance is inherently linked to its culture.
Elevating your culture to a premium level unlocks unparalleled performance. Studies reveal that companies prioritizing culture investment outperform those who haven’t made equivalent investments by 7 to 8 times more. Understanding the significance of this, we unequivocally prioritize and place culture at the forefront of everything we do.
What is the Sandbox approach to navigating performance excellence?
Our mantra lies in the organizational triad of excellence, starting with culture.By understanding and nurturing organizational culture, we move to structural aspects, ensuring support services for optimal performance. Progressing to a top-down optimization starting with leadership development, our approach benefits global organizations across 20+ industries. The Culture, Structure, People (CSP™) Framework is a game-changer, empowering companies to unlock their true potential. CSP™ focuses on organizational culture as the foundation, offering a roadmap for exponential growth. In today’s business, if you’re not actively evolving, especially culturally, you’re already trailing. At Sandbox, we understand this deeply. That’s why our CSP™ Framework isn’t just a tool, it’s a critical mindset. We focus on cultural evolution because neglecting it doesn’t just hurt—it holds back performance. Embracing change? That’s not just good practice, it’s essential. It’s about being a game-changer, about leading the pursuit of excellence. This approach has proven its worth time and again in the real business world, not just in theory.
How has the global impact of COVID-19 reshaped how companies approach culture management?
Before the global impact of COVID-19, many companies operated under the assumption that physical presence guaranteed productivity. However, the shift to remote work during the pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in company cultures. The realization dawned that a premium culture, especially when trust and flexibility are introduced, is crucial for sustained success.
COVID acted as a catalyst, exposing gaps and cracks in organizational culture and galvanizing companies to reassess their cultures and adapt to the evolving needs of a changing world. The pandemic not only necessitated flexibility in the workplace but also highlighted the importance of proactive culture management. Waiting for emergencies like COVID-19 to underscore the need for a premium culture is not advisable. Instead, companies should continuously evaluate and adjust, aligning their cultures with changing generations, climate considerations, and diversity and inclusion requirements.
The pandemic served as a game-changer, putting culture, structure, and people at the forefront of organizational success. Culture, in particular, emerged as a recognized competitive advantage for any organization. Rather than allowing it to evolve by accident, often developing individual cultures within companies, investing in a deliberate culture strategy was shown to unlock true potential and yield substantial results in the long term.
What are the next steps for Sandbox?
Sandbox’s next phase involves deepening our expertise in people analytics. Over the last five years, we’ve pioneered this in Sri Lanka and the region, seamlessly integrating it with our culture-centric approach.
Culture Pulse™, our platform, is now a cornerstone for leading companies. It provides dynamic visualization, eliminating assumptions about organizational culture. Organizations can observe and gain insights into culture directionality, whether it leans towards a familial, entrepreneurial, market-oriented, or controlling atmosphere. The platform vividly illustrates how culture evolves and what your employees THINK your culture is vs what you want to be perpetuated.
We focus on leveraging this technology and expanding its reach regionally and globally. As a pioneering Sri Lankan company, we’ve consistently broken barriers and have no intention of slowing down.
How can organizations build a solid culture to address the brain drain issue?
Sri Lanka is grappling with a significant brain drain issue, an undeniable reality. The core reason behind this phenomenon is not individuals leaving specific companies but instead departing from the broader cultural landscape of Sri Lanka itself.
Culture, in this context, extends beyond organizational boundaries. It’s a shared responsibility that transcends competition among companies. Collaborative efforts are crucial to make culture a distinctive competitive advantage for Sri Lanka. Instead of showcasing whose culture is superior, organizations need to unite and build a culture that retains talent within the country.
As Sri Lanka contemplates implementing laws allowing organizations to terminate employees based on performance, those that haven’t prioritized culture may find themselves at a disadvantage. Without a clear focus on the characteristics, norms, and zero-tolerance behaviours, organizations risk being ill-prepared for this golden opportunity to reshape their teams for optimal performance. Proactive preparation is essential, as these laws present a unique chance to right-size organizations, attract the right talent, and eliminate non-contributing individuals aligned with the organization’s mission and vision. Organizations must strategise and prepare now, as the impending laws offer a golden opportunity to optimize teams for high performance.