Case Study
Creating a strategy that integrates commercial, social and environmental value
The Challenge
Thakeham Homes is one of the leading housebuilders in the South of England with an innovative approach and a focus on building sustainable homes and creating thriving communities.
Their highly visionary CEO wants to address the UK’s housing crisis and create thriving sustainable communities. They take an innovative approach to homebuilding, looking for inspiration from other sectors and countries.
They realised the business didn’t have a clearly articulated North Star written down. With a business of over 235 employees and many external stakeholders, they needed to capture this vision and strategy so that everyone was aligned and could translate it into deliverable plans.
The CEO asked us to work with him to produce a short document articulating Thakeham’s North Star (their vision and strategy).
The Approach
We facilitated a discussion with the CEO where we drew out the key elements of his vision and strategy.
We used our existing understanding of the business to guide the conversation and asked questions to capture:
- The purpose of the business and the problem it’s looking to address;
- His vision – what the world will look like once the strategy has been delivered;
- What Thakeham will do to deliver this vision;
- The key strategic enablers of that vision; and
- What makes Thakeham special and its approach unique.
After this conversation, we created a draft ‘strategy on a page’ together with supporting notes. An important element of this was showing how each element of the strategy delivered commercial, customer, social and environmental value – i.e. that the business model, approach and the impact it wants to have are truly integrated.
We iterated this document in response to feedback from the CEO and his Chief of Staff and shared it with the wider Executive Team for feedback.
We had a second working session with the CEO and his Chief Operating Officer, discussing the feedback and deciding how to integrate it into the document. We also discussed how to share this with their Management Team in a way that would establish the ownership needed for delivering the North Star in the years to come.
Results
A clearly articulated and inspiring North Star (vision and strategy) that will:
- Enable internal teams to align on the direction of travel for the business and what they need to do to deliver it.
- Excite external stakeholders to what can be achieved by working together.
“Working with Nicky and The Spiral Hub team brought us the best of professional-services consulting acumen, coupled with the understanding of how to approach a privately-held, founder run company and all underpinned by a very human, sustainability-focused approach. Importantly from my viewpoint as Chief Executive, they listened and took time to understand the business and my thinking. We operate better as a result of the partnership and we appreciate it."