Change Management: Land and Property Senior Leadership Team development and Land Anchor Network launch

Concentric Consulting supported Yorkshire Water’s – Land & Property senior leaders alignment change program and their launch of the “Land Anchor Network”

Brief

Supporting senior leaders to A (develop and align their strength & leadership) and B (deliver the Land Anchor Network strategy)

Yorkshire Water, Land & Property [L&P] Team needed support to strengthen their leadership and drive the tactical direction required to develop the strategy and deliver the “Land Anchor Network” to comply with YW’s PR19 mandatory performance commitment, engage with their landowners, experts, and the public.

A – “Leadership alignment change program” for the L&P Senior Leadership Team
Design & Development of a change program with the L&P senior team, researching current state identifying changes needed in 2 workshops which delivered:

1. Uncovered individuals’ talents, discover their strengths, and understanding of how to use these as an effective and successful leader (using the “Strength Finders” process)
2. Create deeper understanding of the L&P Strategy and the ownership and ambition needed from the team for this to be successful
3. Define a transformation change plan to support delivery of the strategy in Q1 2020 (workstreams, milestones, resources, risks & opportunities)
4. Gain alignment for the communication and stakeholder plan to engage and deliver a L&P whole team strategy at the launch workshop in early November 2019

B – Alignment on the aim and vision for the Land Anchor Network key activities developed in a collaborative partnership with 3ADAPT YW’s specialist sustainability consultants
Delivery of the Land Anchor Network strategy, designing and delivering the readiness to launch program achieving:

1. Prepare and Launch – alignment on clarity & ownership with the change leads and engagement with stakeholders and communication of the launch
2. Organisation Design – act as trusted advisor to test the design and team roles & responsibilities
3. Upskilling session – Effective conversations and role model these as senior leaders
4. Leadership and behaviours charter

Delivery

With a Land Strategy go live date of April 2020 we designed and programmed an approach, consisting of workshops and a change program management, that we co-created with the client to ensure the successful development of 3 Key deliverables to support the launch:

1. Organisation Design which was fit for purpose for the execution of the Land Strategy
2. Aligned the Land & Property capabilities, roles and responsibilities to the Land Strategy
3. Lead a series of engagement and coaching sessions to ensure buy-in from the team and the delivery and ownership of the inaugural Land Anchor Network

A – Leadership alignment change program
Concentric’s change management expertise in the delivery of a number of engagement workshops resulted in the successful development of the Governance and Communication Framework for the Land Strategy. This ensured buy-in with key stakeholders and the Management of the Change Approach to support delivery of the L&P strategy in Q1 2020. It also enabled transfer of knowledge and expertise securing ownership in the team for long-term transformation.

B – Alignment and delivery of the inaugural Land Anchor Network for Yorkshire Water Land and Property group
Concentric lead the program management of the delivery of the inaugural Land Anchor Network, which was successfully delivered in December 2019, including:

- Development of a delivery countdown plan
- Establishing the Land Anchor Steering group to deliver governance, decision making and stakeholder accountability
- Programme managed the delivery of the event
- Designed the event to ensure engagement across 80 different stakeholder organisations, alignment of key outcomes and longer-term engagement
- Facilitated the event attended by over 120 delegates to enable positive dialogue, engagement, and consensus
- Supported the real-time capture of outcomes, decisions, next steps

Outcomes

What does good look like and how it is related to the Land Anchor Network
At the close of this project the L&P leadership team worked more collaboratively together as an effective team and build on existing insights and learnings as leaders. Understanding how to use and flex their collective, individual, and wider team strengths successful alignment on delivering the strategy – Metrics related to the strategy objectives were signed off by the team and 3ADAPT, these concise measurements facilitating the creation of targets to enable Yorkshire Water to track progress towards them.

For the wider Yorkshire Water Business, the metrics were used in the Land Anchor Network were adopted and embedded into their new Decision-Making Framework and used to shape the sustainability accounting activities

CLIENT

Yorkshire Water

INDUSTRY

UK Water Infrastructure

SERVICE