Environment Agency
Environment Agency UK Flood Risk Management
| "Streamlining is a key project for us, and it's very important we can implement it and achieve the cost benefits we've targeted. I'm very comfortable with the project so far - it's been done in exactly the right way to include everyone's views and come up with a workable result." David Rooke, Head of Flood Risk Management , UK Environment Agency |
P1 specialise in the development of leadership AND management skills through the doing of “real” strategic work – we do this by starting where the client is – and finding out what they’re proud of, what is going well, and what next needs to happen to make the difference they most want and need.
Our initial brief in the Environment Agency’s Flood Defence Head Office was to help the 30 head office people assimilate a recent restructuring, which by making executives home based had created the possibility of more virtual working. The surface need was for better communication through the design and facilitation of key meetings, but all senior people were also offered the option of personal coaching from a P1 coach/ consultant - which 80% opted for. This gave P1 a chance to explore the strategic process at close quarters, as well as to develop individual leadership and management skills. All this was in the context of the recent floods and a much keener interest from government and insurers in the reduction of risk to householders and businesses.
Whilst the remit was initially for P1 to help with the softer human side of the business, leaving the client to get on with the harder delivery to targets, each executive quickly realised the power of working directly on their toughest individual challenges – and together with their P1 coach each searched for the intervention point offering the highest systemic leverage.
One such point turned out to be re-designing a core business process – the building of new flood defences. This process requires multi-stakeholder inclusion whilst simultaneously applying principles of sustainability - not easy in a culture dominated by economists and engineers. A pragmatic series of workshops, involving more than 40 people, worked through all steps of the process - from DEFRA who were providing the funding, to the contracting companies doing the building - enabled a radical reshaping of the process. This led to a huge increase in strategic decision-making in local river-catchment based areas, all within a national framework embodying enhanced strategic targeting. The aim is to halve the cost of the decision-making process, freeing-up resources for defences that protect the most houses.
Now that implementation is starting, the same principles can be observed to co-create the management of change – so that people can feel involved and not done-to. It is anticipated that whole-system events – even involving hundreds of people - will be held at key moments during the change process – and interspersed with smaller workshops. All of these events again to be collaboratively designed and led – and each based upon the real-time working of issues.
