Strategy refresh takes charity to 2030

Background
In October 2020, two London YMCAs merged to form YMCA London CAN (YLCAN). A year later, CEO Gillian Bowen began to put together a new strategy, with objective and practical support from Action Planning consultant Maurice Adams. That strategy came into effect in April 2022, with an end date of March 2026. With that date approaching, YLCAN came back to Action Planning asking for our support in taking the strategy into a second phase to 2030.

Brief
YLCAN wanted Maurice to carry out a review and refresh of their current strategy. Maurice had retired from Action Planning but agreed to help alongside another of our consultants, Clare Bamberger.

Process
YLCAN wanted to build on their existing Vision and Mission that had been set for a 10-year framework. The framework had worked well for them and the brief was to review the terminology for a change environment rather than make any fundamental changes to their direction. YLCAN knew they have housing capacity challenges to meet, which would demand a lot of attention, and needed the framework to resonate well internally and for their cause beyond 2030.

We worked mainly with four directors, led by deputy CEO John Faulkner. Maurice guided Clare through how they had come up with the current strategy and Clare went through it in detail. She also familiarised herself with YLCAN’s operational plan, which Maurice had also helped to draw up. This was very granular and strong, and YLCAN had since developed an excellent set of measures that the Board was using to see how they were performing.

So they came into this process feeling quite positive about building on an already strong framework.

Clare then prepared a workshop, conducting one-to-one interviews online with Gillian and four directors. She asked how they felt the previous four years had gone, how the strategy had worked, how the operational plan had worked in delivering the strategy, how their scoring system worked and then what they hoped for in the future for their area and the whole organisation.

Clare analysed their feedback, from which she was able to surface five strategic direction decisions that they needed to make. That formed the basis of the first workshop, which Clare and Maurice co-facilitated in person with the four directors. Taking an observer role, Maurice was able to give some valuable observations, while Clare led the facilitation.

Clare also got them to review the values that Maurice had helped them to come up with in 2022, and encouraged them to refresh their wording with more active vocabulary. She  wrote a report setting out the directions they had decided on and the directors workshopped it between them, working out the detail.

After that the revised strategy was presented to the Trustees in a second workshop, adding further refinement to the wording and securing their ownership of the proposed strategy.

The directors then co-produced the revised framework with their heads of operations to refine wording and to draft a new operational plan together. They presented this to the Board, who welcomed their recommendations and approved them.

Outcome
The Board approved the changes and we came out with YLCAN’s Strategy, Beyond 2030.

Consultant’s insight
Gillian, John and the directors brought a real sense that they were now a model YMCA with a very good sense of their strength and expertise. Their new model of youth accommodation has been groundbreaking and they were ready to share.

They were ambitious, wanting to expand the view of how they could contribute to the communities they were serving. The thinking they were doing individually really came together as a group.

I started that first workshop by introducing active listening and curiosity, encouraging them to say things like, “I’m curious how you came to that position.” It resulted in a very collaborative workshop. They worked really well as a team and came up with some really innovative ideas.

Maurice was invaluable. That second perspective really contributed to the success of the workshops, particularly the second one with the new board and the directors. There were a lot of people, some of whom had never met before, and there was a lot of work to get through to get a whole strategy introduced and approved.

The fact that Action Planning has a long-term relationship with YLCAN helped to make it a smooth process.