hilarybarnard.com

Strategy & Leadership Development

Few organisations or businesses have much direct control over the environment in which they work; but in the digital age every organisation needs to learn to ride the big waves of change.  The age of the ultra detailed deliberate strategy is over; but organisations still require long term direction, vision and advice.

 

Shared strategic thinking matters as much as any written plan. Future organisational focus serves best when it evolves to meet shifting conditions and priorities. The competition has to be treated as seriously as do the opportunities for collaboration.  Governance will be most productive when it is proportionate and geared to enhancing organisational performance. The pace of change quickens and what will count is understanding the moves that are open to your organisation. 

 

Strategy and implementation are two sides of the same coin.  HBMC’s strategy work is built on:

  • helping clients see what their current situation is and what the future might hold - identifying where existing skills, resources and capabilities can be used and enhanced to secure that future
  • fostering creative thinking around innovation, options and choices - helping organisations, leaders and change champions to reframe challenges and problems into positive opportunities:
  • deciding the best ways to position the organisation or partners to take opportunities and manage risks - scoping how that future can be built with ambitions that are grounded and deliver value to customers, stakeholders and service users.

The goal is always far more than sheer survival; therefore we support you to make strategic choices that can strengthen staff and financial performance, secure quick wins, lead major change, and build a stronger and more dynamic organisation.


Building leadership for the future

Building management and governance capacity today will help you make the most of tomorrow’s opportunities. However it requires skilled leadership and collective intelligence to steer the organisation, improve performance, influence the culture and enable change.  Talent must be nurtured. The best leaders will be able to adapt and respond to the forces reshaping the economy and society, giving rise to new opportunities and challenges.  The effective leader therefore needs to draw insights from a flood of big data and more qualitative information - to see the implications for established business models.  


HBMC's starting point is that leadership can be found, encouraged and developed not only in the Board and the executive team but throughout the organisation.  This is critical in ensuring that people engage, contribute to, and act on the strategic vision, rather than be passive recipients of someone else's thinking. To achieve this, your leaders will require positive values, self awareness, imagination and considerable resourcefulness.  All of these will enable the development of a top team that is creative and skilled in using initiatives and connections to embed new ways of working and a line of sight to the mission.  

HBMC’s leadership programmes are customised to address the client’s situation, emerging strategy and scope to act; and based on an in depth analysis of need. Participants in these programmes are enabled not only to accept but also to internalise the changes they conclude are necessary:

  • drawing on their learning from past experience of development and change
  • reflecting on their learning during the programme
  • exploring what change is necessary and possible
  • identifying skills and behaviours that will help in leading and managing change
  • considering what methods will work best in engaging staff and people outside the programme
  • enabling networks of mutual support to work well beyond the lifetime of the programme.

HBMC’s strength in strategy and leadership development lies in:

  • keen insights and a passion for leadership and strategy
  • understanding the small and large P, political context and dynamics
  • 20+ years working with and developing new and established leaders and helping clients to produce winning strategies
  • wide experience of running programmes that are stretching but empowering, practical, accessible and with recognised application to those participating
  • a commitment to tailored, open and innovative approaches to strategy and leadership development
  • experienced facilitation that fosters creative approaches and enables insight, consensus, decision and action
  • strategy and leadership development resources and a toolbox that span several disciplines and organisational theories
  • a rigorous practitioner and well researched focus
  • self assessment tools to support leadership development.

A number of HBMC's strategy and leadership development assignments are carried out under the umbrella of HBRL Consulting. HBRL has published work on a range of strategy and leadership development themes, including strategy for Boards, reinventing your organisation and developing and using balanced scorecards. 

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Designing and delivering leadership development in the museum sector is an example of Hilary's successful joint consulting with Ruth Lesirge as HBRL Consulting - as you'll see in this AIM case study >>

Planning and facilitating the leadership development of Parkinson's UK is a further example of how HBMC works >>


“Hilary is an able and accomplished Board facilitator who knows how to keep the discussion focused and has a wealth of experience and professional knowledge on which to draw. 


"He deftly helps teams evolve strategy with due regard for ensuring that the practical stepping stones and measurements are identified as well as facilitating the emergence of a collective understanding of, 

and agreement on, what would be needed of the Board and the staff and their respective responsibilities.” 

Jean Gomm, Independent Non Executive Director