Thriving Through Change

About British Heart Foundation

The BHF fund over £100 million research each year into heart and circulatory diseases.  Since they were founded over 60 years ago their research has helped to reduce deaths from heart and circulatory diseases by more than half.  Their 2030 vision is to see advances across the spectrum of heart and circulatory diseases and to prevent these conditions from developing and for those with existing conditions to have better, longer lives.  Part of their work is to develop evidence-based policies that will help to inform and influence Government and health service decisions. BHF also runs a nationwide chain of charity shops providing high street visibility and a valuable source of income.

The challenge

The head office technology group after a long period of stability was about to undergo a period of change with two groups merging into one. The technology director was keenly aware of the need to bring the team together, equip them with greater awareness, skills and confidence to manage change for themselves and their team to minimise disruption and lead change into the future.

Our approach

Our approach was based around collaborative discussions to establish outcomes, needs and priorities. To build and embed sustainable new skills we recommended a journey-based approach which included a tailored mix of 2 workshops, coaching, action learning groups as well as well-being and resilience information and activities and underpinned by tracking progress along the way. Everything was aligned to the agreed business outcomes.

What we did

We had a short period of discovery to finalise the approach followed by the design and delivery of a 1-day experiential Thriving Through Change workshop focused on building an understanding of individual response to change with easy- to- use tools and ideas to support the team into the next phase of change.

The clients felt they had a very practical experience aligned to their needs and went away with a greater awareness of their own and their peer’s response to change as well as more of a sense of ‘team’ having been open and honest together.

With the outbreak of the pandemic follow-on elements were put on hold but later in 2020 we were asked to deliver two 60-minute online seminars under the banner ‘Time to…’  for the BHF leadership team to support significant organisation wide change:

• Managing through change – A personal perspective of an HR Director
• Building a more flexible mindset using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy ideas