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Our culture of shared leadership, co-creation, developing high levels of trust and ensuring that everyone has influence at every level, means we do things differently.  Nothing demonstrates this better than our recent strategy development journey.  You can see our co-created vision to 2023 in the downloads below.

Often in organisations vision work is done at a senior level or at board level, and then at best staff are consulted about it and can have some involvement – but mostly they are told what the vision is and then they are told they have to deliver it – we didn’t do any of that, we did it completely differently.

North Star to 2023 – Our Five Year Vision
In 2018 we embarked on the development of our five year strategy.  To do this, we involved everyone in the organisation

The organisation invited all staff and the Board to an Open Space event.  An Open Space event allows for any number of people to meet, discuss issues of heartfelt concern, pool their knowledge and make recommendations.  This allowed us all to have input, right from the beginning, on shaping, informing and influencing the Vision to 2023. (For more info on what an Open Space event is, see our downloads below).

The event was designed to provide staff, regardless of organisational position or role, with the opportunity to really influence the future vision of the company. It gave us a forum to question and challenge the status quo, to hold our goals and values up to critical scrutiny through reflection and ultimately begin the journey to transformational change.

From this, twenty six staff then put themselves forward to take on more in-depth work to help develop the vision – these groupings were named ‘Discoverers’ and ‘Visioneers’. Discoverers delving into the detail and researching key areas for improvement and travel, and Visioneers, building on the work of the Discoverers, co-creating, crafting and bringing the vision to life. What held the group together was a deep commitment to the values, ethics and purpose of North Star, which manifested itself as a deeply rooted and unflinching dedication to improving the lives of the people with whom North Star comes into contact.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that as a housing association we are operating in challenging contexts, with funding cuts, rent reductions and simply having to do more for less. Therefore, doing the same thing we’ve always done just doesn’t work anymore, luckily we woke up to this in 2013. By involving all staff in creating the future vision the organisation is leading the way in transformational change, it’s more creative and reflexive. It provides the opportunity for staff to really learn, develop and grow and leads to a much stronger business.

 

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