Strategic planning program galvanises leaders in the homelessness sector to create clarity and ownership at all levels.
Category: Organisational strategy development & planning
Challenge
This branch of a state government department is responsible for delivering services to people who are homeless and at risk of homelessness. As part of their work, they collaborate with housing providers and numerous ancillary services.
Financial year 2024/25 marked a critical window of opportunity for the branch to deliver an ambitious agenda, against the backdrop of a national cost of living crisis, to reduce homelessness and improve outcomes for the most vulnerable. It was also a time to respond to feedback from staff seeking clearer direction for the branch and subsidiary units.
What Zing & Co did
We guided the leadership group to define priorities and document clear action plans they were ready to deliver. As a first step, it was essential the branch defined and agreed a succinct set of clear, achievable priorities for the branch as a collective. This served to:
Provide direction to all staff and partner organisations
Enable leaders to manage to outcomes instead of tasks
Assist branch leaders to identify as one, cohesive leadership group responsible for the ambitious agenda.
We also led the branch’s subsidiary units to co-create and own action plans to implement the priorities. This set teams and individuals up for success by providing a clear, structured approach for planning, implementing and measuring their work.
Ultimately, we delivered a set of plans that included the branch’s priorities on a page (with vision and sample measures), each unit’s actions and cross-branch actions (with accountable people named), and a simple Gantt chart template for plotting and monitoring the timing of delivery.
In the process, Zing and Co helped the leadership team increase their cohesion and accountability as a leadership group. We conducted this project as true facilitators; where we prompted discussions and decisions, and the organisation led and owned all of those decisions. As a result, in a matter of weeks we witnessed a noteworthy change in the leadership team’s dynamic and they clarified their ways of working across units to collaboratively deliver the agenda they had set.
What you can learn from this organisation
When a team comes together to genuinely co-create plans, and the head of the team empowers leaders to make and own decisions, they can create clarity that endures beyond political and organisational changes. This means better results for clients and more engagement and satisfaction for staff, who have clear direction and ownership.
