Client Stories: Investigate and Understand.
Companies House
Making It Real - The understanding and cascading of change throughout an organisation.
Making it real - The understanding and cascading of change throughout an organisation.
Beginning.
Companies House deals with the registration, regulation and incorporation of limited liability partnerships and limited companies in the UK.
Whilst undergoing a large-scale programme of both operational and cultural change, Companies House invited us to come and help their Chief Executive and her senior management team to build a shared understand of their strategy so as to have unified messages appropriate to their internal teams and external stakeholders to be able to initiate and sustain the necessary changes.
Middle.
The 30 participants took part in a pair of collaborative workshops that allowed them to explore the strategy and how it would be realised throughout the organisation. They used story to better understand the impact on a wide variety of colleagues, the relevance to external parties within the civil service and the benefits to the public and companies that use their service. Teams, who each focused on specific audiences, shared they co-created presentations to share the learning gained about different content for different audiences. Discussion at the end of the workshops identified the key common messages and highlighted approaches to trickier content and difficult questions.
End.
The insights gained from this creative approach fed into the continuing adaptions and changes to the overall programme, whilst giving the participants the toolkit with which to communicate the right messages, to the right audience, at the right time.
King’s Fund.
Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts - Creating and sharing the Network story.
Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts - Creating and sharing the Network story.
‘I really enjoyed working with you. Lots of great ideas to try and to take forward’
Senior Consultant – Leadership & Organisational Development King’s Fund.
Beginning.
The King's Fund is an independent charitable organisation working to improve health and care in England. Their vision is that the best possible health and care is available to all. Within their 2-day King’s Fund Leadership Development Programme, they worked with Greater Manchester Clinical Network to explore their leadership role. They asked us to help lead a practical session with the Network to define, create and share their Story.
Middle.
As part of day 1, we delivered a collaborative workshop that helped members from across the network come together in small groups to define the Network’s value and importance: how much greater the total is to the sum of its parts. And to see these values and articulate them as stories about their immediate circle, Greater Manchester and the NHS as a whole. The techniques challenged and enabled the participants to clarify, tangibly what was important to them to say about the Network now, to who and what do their audiences need to know.
End.
The Network members forged new, and strengthened existing links between each other while gaining a better understanding of what the Network was for and what it could achieve. They gained greater insights into how they could work more closely and effectively together as the Network, whilst improving that essential leadership quality: open and honest communication that connects your audience to your purpose, and ignites their desire to actively take part in it.
UNHCR, Online Coaching.
Is That In My Job Description? - Finding the story to communicate an e-learning programme to support new functions.
Is That In My Job Description? - Finding the story to communicate an e-learning programme to support colleagues with new roles and their specifications.
“After our sessions I totally overhauled the e-learning and went through the exercises again to help build the story. I gained so much from the sessions and have started to apply the same approach with other pieces of work for learning and development. I think this is something ALL my UNHCR colleagues should do.”
Associate PSP Operations Officer at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Beginning.
A.F. of UNHCR asked us to help her bring a fresh method or approach for communicating the key learnings for an e-learning programme aimed at high level staff in the field, who had just been given the go-ahead to start fundraising. Due to the stakeholders and the nature of the topic itself, there were sensitivities. It was important to treat the topic carefully, whilst not losing the key messages and learning. Since A.F. was based in Rome and we were in the first lockdown of 2020 we planned to deliver a set of 2-hour coaching sessions with her over Zoom. Although the original purpose was to help A.F. with communication and creation of the e-learning it was clear that a solid investigation and understanding of the subject and her audience were needed first.
Middle.
A.F. took part in some preparation prior to the coaching, working through a handbook of techniques to start the process of investigating her subject and the desired outcomes of the e-learning. In the first session Lily responded to her pre-work to draw out and question the desired meaning and to build up details and specificity that would carefully articulate what she wanted to convey.
In the second session A.F. built the structure and content of what she wanted to communicate and developed the descriptions of the stories she could tell. Throughout Lily challenged her to experiment with how she talked about the difficult subjects, towards finding an appropriate, sensitive and empathetic telling without losing sense and clarity so as to achieve the purpose of the stories within the e-learning.
End.
Using our methodology and seeing her subject as a story, challenged the way A.F. was thinking about the work itself, using different perspectives helped build a more holistic view, she broke down the issue into its main components to gain greater clarity which resulted in a more engaging piece of work. A.F. has continued to apply the techniques she has learnt and feels more confident in her ability to prepare, structure and communicate.
Ian Richie Architects and Merthyr Tydfil Council.
Meaningful Consultation and Collaboration - Ensuring the community shape their future.
Meaningful Consultation and Collaboration - Ensuring the community shape their future.
Beginning
Ian Ritchie Architects invited us to work with them as part of a team of experts to help create a master plan to develop Merthyr Tydfil, to reinvigorate the historic assets and imagine outstanding ideas which would elevate the expanded 100 hectare park, and re-energise the people’s pride in their history, culture and environment: The Cyfarthfa Plan.
Our role was to design and facilitate workshops with stakeholders from the town to investigate with them, the rational and themes to inspire, stimulate and guide the plan. The workshops would also test, define and describe how individuals, groups and visitors to the town would experience the realised plan and how citizens would play an active role and benefit from it. A vital element to the overall approach of the project was that the town would be involved and truly consulted.
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Following meetings with the iRAL team to understand the combined approach and visits to Merthyr Tydfil, we firstly delivered a workshop with a group of stakeholders which included individuals from the museum, planning, local environmental and arts groups, the council and the Design Commission for Wales. The enjoyable and active workshop used storytelling to unpick what was truly important for the town to keep, represent and grow from (and what had to be avoided and solved). The participants created stories to investigate how the Cyfarthfa Plan could grow with and for the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. Later in the project a second workshop was delivered (online due to Covid 19) with the same stakeholders to explore the iRAL team’s plan before it was launched. The participants imagined how visitors and citizens would experience the developed landscape, cultural, creative and heritage sites and test if the intended themes represented were being realised and told through them.
End
We were delighted that the participants to our workshops were surprised that they enjoyed themselves so much while they also felt they were being meaningfully consulted and involved in something that was important to them. The outputs of the workshops contributed to the design team’s plan and how it was articulated using the themes that had risen from the workshops. The second workshop helped to identify what wasn’t being successfully communicated and consolidated what was strong and inspirational about the Cyfarthfa Plan, ahead of it being launched by Merthyr Tydfil Council.
Cross Sector Leadership Exchange
Not Just in Emergencies - Collaborating across sectors to serve the public better with shrinking resources.
Not Just in Emergencies - Collaborating across sectors to serve the public better with shrinking resources.
“The step-by-step tools were simple to understand and provided obvious benefit, even if used in isolation. The technique of using storytelling, particularly telling the story from another’s perspective, was very powerful and has stuck with me. Josh kept a good control over the proceedings, moving things forward when necessary and maintaining the energy in the room through enthusiasm and building on suggestions.”
CSLE Director
Beginning.
The Cross Sector Leadership Exchange brought together strategic partners across the public and third sector to provide an environment that facilitates the development of their leaders.
To close their regular Leading Without Boundaries 3-day intensive course, they partnered with us for a collaborative workshop so that groups of participants could tackle the difficult issues raised and understand how to address them. These ideas and solutions then had to be communicated back to their respective organisations, winning over both hearts and minds for the challenges ahead. A CSLE board member attended one of our open workshops and recommended us for the national programme.
Middle.
Over our full day workshop, participants were challenged to work in teams, across sectors, to see how their different organisations could work together to solve complex problems explored over the previous two days. This involved creating a story - a practical solution - through negotiation, listening and collaboration, all within a very tight timeframe.
End.
Each cohort, who has taken part in our Collaborative Story workshop, found that the humanising aspect of storytelling allowed their solutions to be tangible and actionable, both in their own eyes and in those of their stakeholders. By incorporating the thinking and knowledge of the different sectors collaborating and considering the many different perspectives of individuals and organisations involved in any given situation, unexpected insights and ways forward were revealed. Participants were able to tell their story engagingly and with awareness for the ramifications of each solution to the many agencies involved.
Richmond and Wandsworth Council Children’s Services
More than an Away Day - Strengthening Partnerships through Creative Collaboration across Services.
More Than an Away Day - Strengthening partnerships through creative collaboration across services.
Beginning.
Richmond and Wandsworth Council’s Children Services away day was an opportunity to bring together its partners from the Voluntary Sector, Strategic Partnerships, Community Involvement Links, Safeguarding Children, Commissioning and Contract Management.
They brought us in to facilitate a story workshop that would enable them to look, in small mixed agency teams, at wicked problems, relevant to those taking part. The activities would forge better awareness of each other and stimulate the agencies to work more collaboratively and effectively.
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We led the newly formed cross-sector partnership teams through a full day process to see how they each impacted and could benefit particular individuals, their families and the communities they belong to. Our story structure enabled them to have new and different conversations, seeing aspects of their subject and those involved and affected by it in a new light; which in turn informed how they addressed the solutions. The stories they built and told at he end of the day illustrated the context of their wicked problems, what the solutions look like, how they could be achieved and what the desired or best possible outcomes would be.
End.
Having worked together using the storytelling techniques participants gained deeper understanding of the needs of the people behind the problems that required addressing, the roles they each had to play together in the implementation of solutions and how to work with the varying degrees of constraints on budgets and resources. They found new insights on what each service could offer in combination, to ensure the end support package was greater than the previous sum of its parts.