informing choices

Introduction

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informing choices is an independent management consultancy established to help organisations achieve their goals through creating real-time strategies, effective collaboration and sustainable change. We work with our clients to develop and deliver bespoke services in:

Strategy Development - making sense of the external business environment and the organisational climate; engaging colleagues and external stakeholders in the strategy process, strategic analysis and capability development.

Business Planning - designing and implementing an integrated business planning process; engaging colleagues across the client organisation as required, robust strategic and detailed analysis, budgeting and forecasting.

Partnership Development - developing effective collaboration strategies, facilitating collaborations through their life cycle, brokering connections and dialogue between stakeholders and capability development.

You can keep track of some of our independent work by clicking into related blogs described in the menu to the right. There are also links to a number of tools developed for use in strategy and collaborative working; a number of which can be purchased on-line.

You can also scroll down to see some case studies describing some of your previous work, or select from the Case Study menu on the right.

To contact us directly, click here.

Client Endorsements - What do our clients say?

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“Professional and well prepared, the consultant had a good understanding of the subject matter. He demonstrated very good interpersonal and communication skills, and used a variety of media and methods to work with us. It was also refreshing to experience such interest in how the relationship could work and develop. We have worked through a process that has given rise to specific outcomes and yet supported a free-ranging debate.”
NHS Trust Director.

“Preparation and production of creative materials to illustrate key elements of our business environment was excellent. The process through which we were taken was thorough and gave the team the opportunity to learn about strategy development rather than just see the outputs as a set of proposals later. Of tremendous significance was the customer grid, that helped us identify high and lower priority customers and common areas of environmental challenge for them.”
Commercial Manager.

“I have really enjoyed working with Steve, have valued his contributions and greatly appreciate the positive impact he has had on our work. He has added enormous value both to the project and to me individually.”
Local Marketing Manager.

Both the excellent collaborative working process and the expert facilitation on the day allowed us to quickly develop relationships between the individuals in the two organisations and identified some interesting areas for potential collaboration, particularly at a local level. It was an enjoyable and very worthwhile exercise.”
Account Manager.

“The workshop sessions were well planned and particularly helpful. As well as bringing our own perspective on the trends and issues identified, we were able to discuss how other people saw the same issues. Even understanding the breadth of trends and issues and how they relate to each other was enlightening. The finished scenario documents looked very professional and provided stimulus for a number of strategic discussions with my colleagues across the business.”
Senior Manager.

Bringing customer focus to Secondary Care

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Client Context & Challenge

Re-organisations are a fact of life for many businesses, and hospital trusts are no different. The Corporate Development Directorate was a new directorate that brought together a number of internal support functions with PR, Communications and Marketing.
The challenge was to develop an intervention that supported team building, team development and introduced a customer / stakeholder based strategy development process.

Approach

Getting started in the right way was key, so we made time for an inquiring approach into the client’s needs and the organisational context.
Recognising that the team was newly formed, we spent some time with an ice-breaker designed to encourage colleagues to get to know each other a little better.
We chose to bring together a novel approach to strategy, focusing on what we believe our internal and external stakeholders value from us, given the environmental forces acting on them and their business.
Having prioritised and selected a number of stakeholders to focus on, we employed a facilitated series of dialogue based cross-functional workgroup and plenary feedback sessions to help answer the question, “What do we need to do now and in the future to deliver value to our stakeholders?”

Outcome

Feedback on the team building aspects of the intervention were excellent ; the combination of a “personal” ice-breaker and business focussed exercise with multi-functional teams proving very effective.
The approach also effectively demonstrated the positive aspects of collaborative sense-making, whilst exploring different perspectives.
With broad engagement across the team, wide ranging discussion of both internal and external challenges supported development of new ideas for interacting with customers and internal stakeholders.

Story telling and strategy

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Client Context & Challenge

Whilst processes were in place to support functional strategy development in a UK pharma business, engagement across functions had been variable. But there was a desire to explore new ways of engaging senior managers from across the business in strategic thinking.
As part of strategic planning, the company also wanted to identify strengths and weaknesses across its existing strategies and identify strategic gaps.

Approach

A scenario planning exercise was designed and implemented.
The overall process included:
- the development of initial stimulus material (external trends)
- initial sense-making by members of the leadership team – adding their perspective and making connections
- cross functional workshop to develop driving forces and strategic questions
- follow up workshop to develop outline scenarios
- the crafting of four scenarios and production of final materials
- a final workshop to explore robustness of existing strategies, identify potential gaps and areas for further exploration.
Participants (directors and senior managers) were invited to attend sessions, rather than compelled. Of critical significance were the interactive workshops and the user-friendly format of the final scenario documents.

Outcome

Participants gained a broader understanding of external trends and issues through cross-functional sense-making.
A set of 4 scenarios were developed and used to engender an appreciation of different potential futures.
The scenarios provided insights to the strategic landscape, informing the communication of the future environment to HQ as part of strategic planning.
Very positive feedback on both the process, experience and data / information produced.

Collaborative Working Practitioner Programme

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Client Context & Challenge

A pharma company was increasing its interest and investment in account working and customer collaborations. In response, the Partnership Development Team developed an approach to support practitioners in further developing their collaborative working skills.
A number of Account teams / colleagues with some experience and proficiency in collaborating with customers had expressed interest in taking part in Practitioner Workshop sessions.
The challenge was to provide guidance and support to allow participating colleagues make effective decisions on the use of a partnership approach with their customers.

Approach

Two different types of intervention were designed: (1) a 1-day awareness workshop; (2) a series of 3 hour interactive dialogic sessions.
Partnership Awareness Workshops focussed on informing about tools and techniques with exercises in break-outs and plenary feedback and discussion, in a training style.
Interactive Dialogic session focussed on the collaboration process and behaviours in a facilitative / coaching style.
We used the collaboration cycle – connecting, contracting, collaborating, closing – as the basis for each session.
We took “time out” to explore our collaborative behaviours but also ensured that we paid attention to the ongoing operational issues.
The sessions provided opportunity for participants to develop broader collaborative working skills (e.g. partnering, consulting) and also introduced new tools and techniques to support collaborative working including Strategic Thinking, Wicked Problems, Complexity.

Outcome

Sessions planned and delivered as follows: Awareness Workshops - 2 District Sales Teams, Customer Training Team; Interactive Practitioner Workshop series - 3 Account Teams.
Opportunity to share collaborative business issues and seek colleague input to developing collaborative solutions.
Developed an understanding that the way we partner inside the company (to support our intentions and approaches with our customers) is as important as how we collaborate with customers.
Developed a greater understanding of partnering tools and techniques.

Broadening colleague engagement in NHS Trust strategy

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Client Context & Challenge

An NHS Trust had been under significant regulatory and public scrutiny following a series of significant management and system failures and motivation among the workforce was low.
The Trust’s board wanted to engage senior colleagues in strategic thinking with the aim of creating a strategy document that could be shared across the organisation and to re-motivate colleagues around the Trusts’s brand. But a similar intention to engage colleagues in the past had failed as the board’s commitment waned and colleagues felt their input was not valued.
The challenge was to develop and facilitate an effective strategy focused workshop for senior Trust colleagues.

Approach

Careful initial inquiry to understand what had been tried in the past and what scope we had to introduce innovation given the current circumstances.
Collaboratively design an off-site intervention with Strategy Director and two of his senior managers.
Invitations to participate sent to senior clinicians, department heads and admin managers.
Agree limited number of major questions to be addressed. (Questions approved by Chief Exec.)
Workshop design included cross functional break-out groups with plenary feedback. Second “round” questions based on first round feedback. Final plenary session sought to understand issues and ideas identified by break-outs.
Up-front endorsement of approach and commitment to engage with senior colleagues from Trust Chair and Chief Exec.
Delegates given the choice as to which question they wanted to address.

Outcome

Attendance at the workshop of more than 90 directors, senior clinicians, department heads and admin managers.
Engaging dialogue facilitated the development of a number of new ideas as well as the re-statement (with new perspectives) of existing challenges.
Development of content for the strategy document.

Collaborative exploration of partnership potential

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Client Context & Challenge

Partnership is increasingly being perceived as a solution to innovative working and the development of new solutions where the ability to design and implement them does not exist in one organisation alone.
In this example, a national healthcare training charity and large pharma company wanted to investigate the possibility of collaborative working.
We sought to explore potential areas for joint working and also cultural fit – suitability of the individuals and organisations to become partners.

Approach

In setting up a joint sense-making workshop we sought to recognise the different sizes of the two organisations and their respective decision-making processes. We also wanted to pay attention to a sensible balance in terms of the relative seniority of the participants.
Creating a sense of anticipation before the joint workshop and accelerating relationship development were key start points. This was accomplished by engaging participants in questions about the other organisation, and then meeting for an informal dinner before the workshop.
The workshop itself included work group, mixed group and plenary facilitated sessions to explore areas of interest and to learn from the differences and similarities shared, focussing on external environmental drivers.

Outcome

A relationship and reputation enhancing open discussion about major environmental business drivers.
A greater understanding of each other’s organisation.
While no specific project was identified at this stage, a number of areas for potential local collaboration were identified.
The notion of a national collaboration was rejected by the company.(Sometimes it is as important to say “no” in a constructive way, rather than be persuaded to engage and invest in a project too quickly, and without the right level of commitment.)

Partnering to develop diabetes services

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Client Context & Challenge

The combination of the increasing significance of primary care commissioning and the drive to move some services traditionally provided in hospitals to a community setting is leading to a number of NHS and Foundation Trusts reviewing how they provide services and maintain / grow existing and new revenue streams.
A large Foundation Trust was seeking support to explore a community based Diabetes Outreach Service in an area with a significant Asian population.
The challenge was to support the Trust and a pharma business in finding ways to collaborate on piloting diabetes awareness and patient tracking within an ethnic population.

Approach

Positioning my role as the “honest broker” between the Trust and a pharma company was important, as was paying attention to how the relationship between the individuals involved in the collaboration developed.
Initial collaborative inquiry, taking the form of a joint “Inform and Inquire” session to understand wants and offers and set up the opportunity to develop a collaborative project. The outputs of this session were shared and a number of potential collaborative initiatives developed for selection.
Focusing on process, involving the right technical experts capable of supporting the work and going the “extra mile” to understand areas of shared interest and to resolve conflict were critical.
Key meetings were held at both pharma and NHS facilities with a clear agenda agreed before hand, but with an acknowledgement that we might need to be flexible. Outcomes and actions from meetings were shared with participants and other stakeholders as appropriate.

Outcome

The parties initiated a pilot project combining their own areas of expertise and contributing resources.
Endorsement was sought and obtained from the PCT who also provided logistical support.
Relationships between the Trust and PCT, and the pharma company and PCT were strained but participation in the initiative helped to improve a number of individual relationships.
Facilitation of the collaboration was accredited as providing momentum, challenge, conflict resolution and effective project management.

Market and Business Research

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Clients Context & Challenge
Understanding aspects of the pharmaceutical industry / NHS collaboration market place represents a regular challenge for informing choices and our clients. Clients have sought to understand the situation to help them:

make sense of the opportunities to work more collaboratively with their customers in their own market (Ireland); and
prepare their own organisation to up their game in collaborative working.

To support client work and importantly inform our own practice, we have also undertaken extensive research into collaborative working practice in the UK.
Approach
Our approach to meet the needs of clients directly and our own
research effort include:

Desk research;
Telephone interviews (conducted from a specifically designed interview guide);
Contacts via our own network;
Accessing our own information already held on file.

Outcome

Full detailed written report. (Summary of our research featured in Pharmaceutical Marketing trade journal.)
Abbreviated information slide decks designed for reference or presentation for clients.
Hard copy detailed reports of the market place for clients.
Sense-making workshops for clients.

Inquiring into collaboration in futures work

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Client Context & Challenge

Across-functional network of futures analysts were meeting regularly to discuss aspects of futures work.
The client / hosting organisation sought innovative activity to stimulate the group further.
Our participation with the group provided the opportunity to develop an hypothesis that the futures work discussed could be more effective if a collaborative approach was taken, when appropriate.
A programme of work was implemented to engage members of the network in an inquiry to understand their experience and perspective on collaboration in futures work, to articulate our observations and develop recommendations for the network.

Approach
A number of complimentary and linked activities were initiated that were designed to engage interested stakeholders in different ways. The activities included:

The design and completion of a “collaborative working health check” questionnaire;
Structured telephone interviews;
Consolidation of feedback to support sense-making
Facilitation of a seminar on collaboration
Development of blog to inform stakeholders of the work's progress;
Development of a final report to share insights and make recommendations.

Outcome

Individual and consolidated collaborative working profiles;
Transcripts of interviews with futures practitioners with an interest in collaboration;
Output of a practitioners focus group
Interim blog to share insights developed “as we go”;
Overall assessment of the part collaboration does and can play in government futures work, including recommendations.

“Outside-in” thinking to strategy development

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Client Context & Challenge

The re-structured Commercial department of a large company sought to develop a strategic plan. There were a number of commercial activities taking place outside of its span of control and a concern that the team’s value to the organisation was unclear.
The challenge was to help the team understand the current nature of the Commercial Department’s strategic control and consider how the team might extend their sphere of influence into other value added commercial activities. In any large team it is often the case that there is a lack of understanding about what different colleague’s roles entail, so there was an element of team building required too.

Approach

Contracting for roles and responsibilities was key as this programme of work touched a number of functions across the business.
We initially sought to articulate organisational hurdles to change.
A number of workshops were held providing opportunity for the team to work together to:
- understand the range of different customers
- allocate a priority rating to them based on the degree of change they were undergoing and their significance to the client business
- reach consensus on how customers experience external environmental drivers
- identify commonalities between customers
- challenge how the client would deliver value to their customers now and in the future
- prepare the ground-work for developing customer-centric strategies

Outcome

Participants gained greater clarity about their colleague’s roles.
A realistic perspective on the nature of the team’s strategic control was developed.
The team worked together to jointly make sense of the business environment and the drivers acting on them. This helped to prioritise customers and activities accordingly, supporting strategic and tactical activity development.
Wall charts were produced through the analysis work to show the customer prioritisation, mapping of customers and environmental drivers and value statements for key customers now and in the future.