Key achievements

Board effectiveness

Working with organisations to ensure that governance is fit for purpose and effective.

Led a full Board effectiveness review for a Multi-Academy Trust to ensure a shared understanding of what the board needed to become more effective and efficient and to lead a programme of cultural alignment across the organisation.

Contacted by the board of Trustees of a leading international charity to ensure they were better able to govern their international subsidiaries. Established board protocols, streamlined decision making and designed effective committee structures which enabled the charity to expand its business with greater confidence whilst enabling local decision-making.

A large CCG made contact as the Governing Body was finding it difficult to agree a strategy for system wide transformation. Developed buy-in for their vision and facilitated the board to ensure it understood its appetite for risk, proper scrutiny of the mitigations and the steps required to achieve its goals. This resulted in a unified governing board that then played a leading role in the development of system wide approaches to quality improvement.

Audience analysis

One of the largest property and leisure management, development and regeneration companies in the UK was struggling to gain business from the NHS. Extensive investigations including a stakeholder map which showed they had been communicating with the incorrect individuals at the NHS, brand analysis and development on understanding board papers from local NHS providers provided a clear route forward. Expedited a way to describe their product in ways that were meeting an NHS need, eased their way to create a script for them to talk to the correct people. This resulted in them creating business opportunities with a large NHS provider.

Designing quality systems

Contacted by a significant housing association that operated across Greater London which was finding operational issues were inhibiting proper joint working due to a lack of shared understanding of risk and quality. Enabled the development of a quality system which exceeded the expectations of due diligence by NHS provider partners with clear escalation processes and learning from incidents embedded. As a result they earned the recommendation of NHS providers and were able to use this to drive business growth.

Strengthening Board reputation

Approached by the Welsh Government to become a special adviser to a health board that had been put in special measures. Undertook an audit of the board’s reputation with internal and external stakeholders to establish whether there was alignment between the identity that the organisation had and the image of the organisation held by external stakeholders. Fed-back the findings and identified the steps required of the board to rebuild trust. Ensured that this was a bi-directional between the board and stakeholders such as the public, patients, staff and community representatives. Followed this with a stakeholder mapping exercise and an action plan for managing key relationships. This led to a measurable improvement in trust over the ensuing twelve month period and a strengthening of relationships.

Enabling greater cooperation between health and housing

Led an initiative with NHS England to create greater cooperation between developing housing associations and NHS Mental Health Trusts. Drove an analysis of the psychosis care pathway to demonstrate the contribution that housing associations could make from advice through to ‘move on’ accommodation. Requested an independent evaluation by London School of Economics who also extrapolated the potential saving at an England-wide level. This plan has since been adopted by NHS England and forms part of the commissioning guidance for mental health