Radical Strategic Governance

Organisation: Clowns Without Borders

The project: With some new Trustees having recently joined the Board, and the organisation being at a strategic crossroads, I designed and facilitated a team Away Day with the dual purpose of building Board relationships and starting to scope future strategic direction. Modelling the organisation’s playful approach, we got creative with Lego, cards and packets of Lovehearts whilst exploring potential for impact at the intersection of the team’s passions, the organisation’s competencies and the ecosystem needs. By the end of the day we had created a first draft Theory of Change and strategy outline ready to share with the charity’s Children’s Board whose initial ideas had formed the basis for our exploration of values and approach – radical governance in action!  I went on to work with the team to channel their creativity into an impact framework which embraces their playfulness whilst showcasing the deep impact of the work.

Impact:

• Following the Away Day, CWB shared the Theory of Change and Strategy with its Children’s Board for feedback. Incredibly, this has inspired a new stream of work in the UK (alongside the international work) as well as really pushing the organisation to apply long-term thinking about impact and legacy of its projects – incredible!
• The process has resulted in a clear roadmap for the organisation as it prioritises how to allocate resources in a way that is guided by young people, is aligned to the organisations values and is an effective way of making a lasting impact.
• This work has also inspired creative thinking around how to demonstrate impact using diverse forms of data, thinking beyond what fits into conventional frameworks, led by children and families who participate in CWB projects. It has unlocked fresh thinking around evaluation and learning.
• I guided the team in channelling this new thinking into the co-creation of impact measurement tools centred on children’s voices, using multiple forms of creative ‘data’ to create an ‘evidence’ bank.

“The day felt extremely well- balanced in terms of set-up, discussion and output and your expertise in guiding us through it was terrific. You kept us focussed and on track without the process being burdensome!… The playful nature of activities set and maintained exactly the right tone throughout the day.”

“We had multiple demands – Trustees getting to know each other as well as starting to develop our new strategy. You managed to achieve both… You helped me to sort the woods from the trees. My thinking was blocked and the away day has helped me find some flow around this. The facilitation was playful, inclusive, thoughtful, adaptive… and the power of metaphor (trees) to help clarify messaging was marvellous!”

“It was such a relief to have you help us create a ‘container’ for us to organise our learning, and to understand and demonstrate our impact in a way that recognises and values our teams’ creativity and doesn’t just become a box-ticking exercise – thank you!” – Samantha Holdsworth, CEO

Via: Fair Collective