Strategy

We were looking for an organisation that could help us integrate our theory of change into our strategic planning process alongside project management support and SMT workshop facilitation to enable everyone to reach a shared level of understanding. Out of all the responses we received, we felt that Eastside People had the most specific experience of developing strategy and partnerships in the areas of social mobility and youth, of managing the move from a theory of change to a longer-term strategy and of facilitating engaging strategy development processes.

Alice and Ruth were very good at asking targeted questions, bringing in people at different levels of the organisation, reflecting back, and cutting through the noise,” she says. “We often framed our conversations around practical delivery, and Eastside People could reframe these ideas strategically…There was this miraculous moment where we’d done all the talking, and Eastside People came back and had captured everything in a more strategic way than we could articulate it.

Excellent and I would strongly recommend Eastside People to anyone. The Eastside People team and Paul inspired confidence, listened attentively, understood and worked with us effectively. Quickly established an understanding and a rapport which enabled us to move forward effectively and with confidence.

I thought it was a great day. I think the level of trustee engagement was very positive and creates momentum. The quality of the facilitation enabled us to achieve strong outcomes. For instance, our Trustees came away a lot clearer as to where they should invest their time to support and oversee the work of the charity.”

Thanks to the engaging and informative workshop delivered by AI Confident & Eastside People, our leadership team now feels more comfortable and well-prepared to embrace AI, and encourage responsible use. The session effectively demystified AI, providing us with a solid understanding of its fundamentals, potential use cases and risks. Our aim for the session was to collectively feel more comfortable with all aspects of AI, and it more than delivered on that aim. We left with a clear understanding of the next steps we need to take and empowered to champion AI applications within our teams while clearly understanding risk and the required governance. This workshop was instrumental in helping us feel more confident with AI and its applications, paving the way for future innovations.

We are thankful to EP for the support provided to the social enterprises in our accelerator programme. We received great feedback on the workshops led by EP consultants.

ShareAction engaged Eastside People to help us understand the strategic options available for an operational unit, including partnership, social investment and spinout. We were grateful for the breadth and depth of experience which EP consultants John Leach and Warren Taylor brought. Their advice greatly strengthened what we would have been able to do ourselves, giving the management team and board assurance that the market had been fully explored. They delivered a great outcome to maximise the success of the important programmatic work and ensure its long-term sustainability.

It was super helpful to have you facilitating the day, we both agreed that we got further than expected and I think we are very upbeat and motivated about the next steps.

As a medium-sized charity British Home needs to manage its resources efficiently, while also responding to the emerging risks and opportunities within an unpredictable health and social care environment. Eastside People provides access to a broad range of professionals, providing the intellectual capacity and practical support required to navigate our strategic challenges when and where we most require it. British Home has worked with Eastside for over four years, and I remain continually impressed not only by the range of insight and expertise provided but also by their collaborative style, which often feels as if they’re a natural extension of our team.

NOAH’s theory of change developed with Eastside People was instrumental within the development of our 5-year strategy. It has also been the cornerstone of our ongoing social impact analysis through which we hold ourselves accountable for making a genuine, quantifiable, and lasting difference.

Ann, our Eastside People Consultant, helped us get a group of new Mentors ready to support Social Entrepreneurs. She has an incredible ability to listen to the needs of the trainees and adapt her style and the content of the sessions to suit them, and it was a real pleasure to work with her. As a result of this partnership, we were able to train 18 new Mentors and develop a series of auxiliary materials to aid them in supporting Social Entrepreneurs to sustain and increase their impact.

I have no doubt that the strategy wouldn’t have been as robust without Eastside People. We will have a road map for BAUS for the next four years, which is critical for any organisation.

We really appreciated the depth of knowledge and flexibility offered by John (our EP consultant). His summary report on our accommodation options, based on local research and several meetings with us, has been really supportive to the board making decisions on how to treat the charity's assets and funding allocation to properties.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with James to plan and facilitate a strategic planning workshop with our Board. He brought a great deal to the day, not just in his excellent facilitation skills, but also his own experience of strategic development. The outcome was a clear articulation of our vision and top-level strategic aims which has since informed a revision of our strategic plan.

It was hugely energising. It was a catalyst to get us all involved in the one thing.... The EP team were great and worked really well together, and I liked that they challenged us, but in a constructive way. It felt like one big team, with the EP team supporting us throughout.

I liked Eastside People’s style, which went down well with the board, and their emphasis on consultation which works well for us as a membership organisation.... Eastside People helped with the diversity of interactions we had. These included internal meetings, staff away days, telephone interviews with members, member workshops and board meetings.

I was very impressed with the professionalism, responsiveness and focus of Eastside People generally and specifically the consultant leading the search. They had a very deep understanding view of the brief, were very responsive in dealing with questions about the process and the informal and formal interviews were friendly while being searching and thorough.

We worked with the Eastside People team to try and find a new home for 3SC. Their team worked hard to understand our hopes and ambitions and to identify potential best fit organisations. They were extremely pro-active in driving the process and keeping us updated as a Board. While we finished up finding a different solution without Eastside Primetimers involvement we would almost certainly have spent much time down rabbit holes, chasing unsuitable partners. Thank you.

I simply must send you our new Strategic Direction to 2030 published last month! The result of the work Eastside People did with us! You can find it here https://www.waterwise.org.uk/2022/08/24/influential-campaigning-organisation-waterwise/. We're proud of it! Definitely flexing our independence a lot more already. We launched it with a series of v short videos about aspects of it from the team and Tania - you can find them on the Waterwise LinkedIn page.

We really enjoyed working with Eastside People as we developed our three-year strategy. They quickly demonstrated they understood our needs and identified great consultants to work with us, who led us through the process and offered challenge when we needed it. Richard Litchfield and Jo Gratrick were highly knowledgeable and greatly skilled, and their input helped us achieve our goal of a strategy that is meaningful to our trustees, members and staff. I would have no hesitation recommending working with Eastside People and have engaged them again on another piece of work.

The support that Eastside People provided first of all helped us to take time out to think about where we stood as an organisation and how we could move forward. It then led to us developing strategies and processes in a range of areas that will better position us to deliver new services and help us express our social value in our local community in Redbridge, in line with our values.

We approached Eastside People to support the Association in developing a five-year strategy. Eastside People has a practical approach and we benefited from the ongoing support we received after our initial away day to write our strategic and operational plans. EP's business model is such that they get to know their clients and then identify consultants that best suit the specific needs and culture of individual organisations. I would not hesitate to recommend them.

Eastside People consultant Linda Holland really helped us with our business continuity planning during the COVID-19 lockdown. She helped us to review what we had in place, and identify not only improvements we needed to make, but also how we needed to do it. I'm very grateful for the support. There are 17 people in my team and she facilitated the session really well. Thank you again, it has been incredibly helpful.

Eastside People provide an extra team when we need it giving us new ideas, skills, knowledge, and fresh thinking - particularly in development and growth areas. This gives the team confidence and reassurance in their own ideas and support to help us move from theory to practice. EP collaborates as a business partner and are careful to make sure that we own the solutions and recommendations.

Bernice and Paul quickly showed a real understanding of the environment and candidate we were looking for when recruiting for an Independent Chair of a new Governance committee. Their engagement with stakeholders was exceptional and ensured that the candidates they presented were of the highest calibre. Eastside People took what we thought was going to be a challenging role to recruit and made it successful.

I think you did loads and it was brilliant. As a result of this process I now have a compelling strategy that was co-created with our stakeholders and is helping to unite and inspire staff, supporters and the amazing DofE network behind a clear vision and set of goals.What I really liked about your approach it is that it wasn't one size fit all. I really liked the idea you could pull together a project team that was bespoke to our requirements. Nobody else was offering that. Your model allowed you to have a lot of flexibility about the different expertise you brought to the project and meant the in-house team benefitted from working with experts in a really wide range of disciplines which was brilliant for their learning. I would thoroughly recommend this approach to others. As an added bonus, my leadership team has had hands-on practical experience of how to develop and deliver a strategy development process from the start to the end which has really enriched them and added value to the charity. They were supported by EP to learn and develop through the process and received bespoke coaching in a really wide variety of areas from impact measurement to change management to research methods and developing organisational values and behaviours which is just incredible.

We engaged Eastside People to appraise the different options available for strategic collaboration. Their knowledge, practical support and skilful facilitation of our strategy day helped us make significant progress towards optimising resources, reducing costs, focusing on core specialisms and speaking with a more unified voice.

Kevin was a great support sharing his knowledge and expertise in an easy to understand way. Thank you.