Pinpointing priorities to realising potential
Burrswood Health & Wellbeing
"Action Planning’s development day gave us the facilitated time and space we needed as a board to look more closely at some of our challenges and opportunities. We were able to identify skill gaps, goals and actions to take us to the next stage. David’s facilitation was extremely good and he was very skilled in being able to adapt to the changing agenda."
ANGELA PAINTER, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BURRSWOOD HEALTH & WELLBEING
Background:
Burrswood health and wellbeing delivers whole person care through a range of professional health care services, social services and wellbeing activities. Services include reablement, respite care, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, counselling, occupational therapy, creative activities, spiritual direction, training, residential courses and events. Burrswood is a charity founded on Christian principles, with a desire to keep the love of Christ at the heart of all they do. Twelve months after implementing a major restructure, introducing new services and appointing a number of new executives and trustees, it was important to assess the collective skill set, governance and effectiveness of the board.
Brief:
The initial brief for Action Planning was to run a Development Day for the Board and Executive Team, to identify any gaps in the collective skill set of the Executives and Trustees and to focus on governance. Following David Saint’s initial conversations with individuals, the agenda widened to include a look at the charity’s identity and the way it was marketed.
Process:
David Saint approached the brief by arranging to speak to the Board and Executive Team members individually to gain a good understanding of their personalities, strengths and views. This meant that the Development Day could be used to quickly focus on the key issues, and David could make sure that individual views were given due recognition.
Outcomes:
The two main outcomes of Action Planning’s Development Day were in clarifying the skills gap within the leadership, and giving them a focus on the charity’s identity and culture – who is the target market and what exactly is the charity offering? As a result of this insight, the Board is looking to recruit two new trustees and Action Planning will be running further workshops in 2018.
Consultant’s insight:
It is sometimes the case that organisations put so much effort into honing the wording of their inspirational vision, mission and values statements, that they can lose sight of what those words actually mean. Burrswood’s Board and Executive Team were exemplary in their open-mindedness, as we explored together what was real today, what was aspirational for tomorrow… and what was perhaps beyond aspirational and, therefore, ripe for pruning.