Strategy
The context
Barts Health Group is one of the largest group of NHS hospitals in the UK, bringing together the running of four hospital sites under a single “Group” leadership team, treating over one million patients every year and employing 18,000 staff.
The Group recognised the need to review their strategy and model to ensure it best delivered the strategic vision of the Trust. Barts needed their future strategy and model to ensure accountability was sat at the right place in the organisation, closest to the patient, and ‘free’ leadership capacity from operational delivery. This would enable those within the Group Leadership function to respond to the increasing role they needed to play in driving integration and population health outcomes across North East London.
Our Support
Moorhouse Consulting supported Barts Health Trust to:
- Refresh their organisational and Group Leadership strategy
- Develop a new strategy for their Group Support Services (high volume transactional services)
- Ensure clarity on accountabilities between the group layer, hospital sites, and support services
- Provide an implementation roadmap of the refreshed strategy
- Ensure leadership teams had the people and processes to deliver the strategy
Our approach was built around iteration and co-design, recognising that the client needed a consulting partner who would respond to their thinking flexibly.
- Our team worked across the whole executive, not just with strategy and transformation directorates to help shape the outcome.
- Our team led a self assessment exercise with Barts directors to challenge directors on their alignment to a vision and set of strategic objectives.
- Our team took regular updates and iterations to leadership, with a consistent drumbeat of discussions.
- The whole team brought a commitment to working alongside directors, getting stuck in and being flexible.
Moorhouse used ‘Galbraith Star’ methodology to conduct a rapid review of the existing Group Leadership strategy and model, and produce future designs for each directorate team.
Midway through the work, the fourth Covid hit. This required flexibility on all sides as Barts Group Leadership were pulled into operational pressures. Realising the changing reality, Moorhouse proposed a revised delivery plan to accommodate the increasing pressure leadership would be working with. What was intended to be a 10-week intensive project was ‘slowed’ down until the pressures of the pandemic subsided and intensive engagement could be resumed.
Outcomes
The strategy enabled our client to focus on a core set of priorities, while also supporting their leadership to be more strategic and outward focused.
Barts Health Group Leadership gained a renewed vision, strategy and purpose. Directors have been able to communicate across the organisation with more clarity. In turn this has provided leadership with greater capacity to improve outcomes across North East London.
According to feedback,
“Directors have been through the theory and the design…they are now equipped with the right model and function design to face into the upcoming changes.”
View the Moorhouse Consulting profile in the MCA Members Directory.