This was an intensive interim assignment where we worked with the IDeA to lead the creation of a new department for the Council, as part of its recovery and improvement. Our work included prompting innovative organisational development initiatives and introducing healthier leadership practices.

Our relationship with the City Council extends to over four years now and has included roles as the external adviser on the Council’s Gearing Up transformation programme; developing and leading the Council’s first corporate improvement programme, Serving Nottingham Better; assisting in the Council’s preparations for its 2007 Corporate Assessment and most recently introducing the Council to Appreciative Inquiry, which is now the tool it is using in its exciting vision creation initiative.

Swindon Borough Council

Nottingham City Council

This assignment lasted almost three years and involved being a member of a small team that supported the Ministerial Appointee, Anthony Allen, in his work to assist the Council to improve its corporate governance, which included allied work on organisational processes and structure, improving service performance and a host of important challenges to practice that supported the Council’s large-scale improvement efforts.

 

Our relationship directly with the Council then followed, assisting it to prepare for its Corporate Assessment in 2006, and carrying out executive coaching since then.   

OPDM / Hull City Council

We have had a long-standing relationship with the Service, advising its senior team on leadership and specific organisational development matters. This work has recently developed into an initiative to use Appreciative Inquiry to assist the Service to create a compelling new vision to capture the spirit of a high performing yet still ambitious organisation. The work involves senior team, large-scale events and one-to-one activities that engage and stretch people’s thinking about the potential for their Service. Through AI engagement tools we are helping the Service to extend the engagement with and ownership for change and improvement.        

West Midlands Fire Service

Through Tribal Interim, Oi was engaged to provide an interim Associate Director for Change Management. Over a nine month period Steve has led several teams making up the Change Division of the Council. This involved providing direct management of and support to Heads of Service and other senior managers responsible for the Strategic HR & OD, Communications, Customer First (Consultation and Marketing) and the Change Unit (Programme management and BPR) teams. The central task was to unify and re-energise the teams following a change in management of the Division, and to achieve definable progress in several major programmes and projects owned by these teams. These programmes included a review of the Communications function (completed and being implemented), the creation and implementation of the Council's first OD strategy, and moving the Council's 21st Century Customer access programme towards the creation of a business case. In addition, contributions have been made to the Council's Corporate Management Team and a range of Council-wide programmes, latterly Charter Mark and senior manager events, and the implementation of the review of the Council's design and print unit. The assignment closed with recommendations made as to how the Council might further progress its transformation from 'good to great'.  

Oxfordshire County Council

We have been engaged by a growing number of clients to assist them to change and transform how their organisations work and the impact they have in their communities. As shown by the examples here, the scale of the projects has varied from whole system interventions lasting a year or more to single day events designed to kick-start some changes to strategy or process.

Our work here involved creating and steering the change initiative know as One Council One Vision, including planning the large-scale change effort initiated by the then Chief Executive Katherine Kerswell (now CEO at Northants. County Council), organising and facilitating large-scale open space events and team-based activities, creating ‘reference point’ papers and reports and introducing new thinking around change and improvement.

This was perhaps one of the most high profile local authority stories of this decade. Engaged by the interim Chief Executive (Michael Frater, then CEO at Telford and Wrekin Council, now CEO at Nottingham City Council) to work as a member of an interim corporate team in what was then dubbed by the press as the “worst council in the country”, the collaborative effort to ‘rescue’ and then recover the corporate governance of the Council was a challenging piece of work.

 

Annie Shepperd followed as CEO and we assisted the Council with several important pieces of interim and consultancy work, including using Appreciative Inquiry to create an initiative for the Council and the Local Strategic Partnership that assisted its development of a Vision for Walsall 2021. 

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council

Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council

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