Inspiring Strategic Development

Involving staff in developing a strategy towards an agreed vision is a crucial way for any organisation to gain staff buy-in, ensure relevance and remain agile.

Inspire!, Hackney’s Education Business Partnership has commissioned Clear Thinking Consultancy to support its development as it responds to an increasingly challenging climate of reduced public spend and increased competition across sectors for whatever is left. Agreed support is geared towards ensuring that Inspire! is able to remain robust with effective controls and performance measures despite significant change to the way in which it delivers a number of its operations. This includes income generation, strategic development and reviewing its pricing structures as well as supporting cross departmental project delivery and that of more recently secured European Social Fund projects.

As part of this, CTC was asked to help develop its strategy towards 2015. Having recently achieved the Award for Education Business Excellence, external assessment had already reflected on Inspire!’s exemplary evaluation processes, commitment to innovation and excellence in delivery and the high regard in which the organisation is held by its many and varied stakeholders. This provided an inspirational and motivating starting point that gave credence to the organisation’s current position and, therefore, the notion that this process was about tweaking and shaping as opposed to a complete overhaul of its work.

15th May saw its entire staff and many of its trustees come together for a day, facilitated by CTC, to reflect on its journey thus far, explore the changes happening locally and at a policy level and how they would impact on its services. Finally, in light of all of this, what this meant for the existing strategy and how it could be reshaped to provide a guiding framework to 2015 ensuring that Inspire! remains fit for purpose.

David Blagbrough, Director of Inspire!, was delighted with the result: “We achieved far more than I ever anticipated  and the enthusiasm and commitment you engendered among staff was awe inspiring.  As you will have gathered from the informal feedback, everyone felt that they were genuinely part of the strategic process, that their voices counted and now have strong sense of ownership of the strategy. What I also liked was the way in which staff led elements of the sessions and that all staff were encouraged to have their say. Altogether an amazing day which will set us on a good path to move forward.”

The process continues with various follow up sessions to cascade the framework down towards the activities that operations’ staff will run and how the enabling functions will most effectively support them.