Celebrating lockdown success
The current COVID situation has forced many organisations into adopting new ways of working quickly. These projects have been delivered at breakneck speed and with huge success, which has left many pondering why projects took so long to deliver before?
We have noticed an increase in risk appetites, a willingness to proceed with something knowing it’s not perfect, but better than what you have now. It’s taken a world-changing event for the concept of PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) to fully take off, and let’s hope it’s here to stay. The more benefits people see from approaching change in this way, the less likely we are to go back to the old (and slow) ways of planning and delivering change.
We’ve enjoyed many conversations with our friends in the housing and charity sectors about their amazing experiences of change and transformation during lockdown, and thought their stories are worthy of sharing and celebrating!
In these stories below, we discuss the projects that have been delivered in lockdown and the new and innovative ways that social purpose organisations are now working.
If you have a lockdown success story that you would like to celebrate, we would love to share it! Tell us your story.
Lockdown success stories of business improvement
Russell Thompson
Executive Director of Property Services at Thirteen Group
“When customers have a repair need, what they want is resolution – not an appointment. It is up to us to get them that resolution as quickly as possible.”
Isabel Thonger
Director of Customer Experience at Grand Union Housing Group
“The behavioural insights will enable GUHG to deliver a more personalised customer experience.”
Emma O’Shea
Group Customer Services Director at Aster Group
“Our teams have shown a great deal of agility in learning and building the new system, and this gives us a firm foundation for managing data and insight for the future.”
Sue Shirt
Executive Director of Customer Services at Stonewater
“The crisis has given the organisation a narrative and an impetus for a more radical pace of change… and a greater acceptance for implementing new ways of working that are sailable rather than being 100% ready.”
Kam Basra
Head of Transformation at Citizen
Kam has been using Information Centres and Visual Management to build stronger reliable services in this time of crisis.
Jodie Sherwood
Director of Business Transformation at Saffron Housing Trust
“In a way it feels like we have broken the golden rule of change – do change with people not to them. Coronavirus has forced our hand in so many ways and our people are buying into those changes because they can feel the benefits to them almost immediately.”
Yvonne Castle
Chief Executive at Johnnie Johnson Housing
“When the three-week announcement happened, we issued a survey to all staff asking if they could continue working at home for the next three months (until 23rd July) and 96% of respondents said yes!”
Andrea Baker
Director of Housing & Corporate Services
“Residents are struggling with basic needs, exacerbated and exaggerated by the impact of the pandemic.”
Helen Rowntree
Chief Digital, Services & Innovation Officer
“Our Blood Cancer community were concerned about the impact of COVID from before it was even in the UK. We were getting calls as early as January about it, and over time the demand for support grew exponentially.”
Sandra Currie
Chief Executive at Kidney Research UK
“[The Kidney Beam project] has led us to further challenge the way we do a number of things here and forced us to address why some things take so long.”
Steven Wibberley
Chief Executive at Cruse Bereavement Care
“Bereavement is universal but also unique; we want to be able to offer a more tailored support package for our clients, based on their preferences and an assessment of need. We must avoid going back to the old days of having waiting lists.”
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