Futures Housing Group (FHG) published its new corporate plan for 2020-23. As an organisation, it was moving away from rigid targets to towards a systems-thinking approach. Less focused on hitting a particular number, and more focused on the overall impact its actions are having on its customers.
Part of this shift was reimagining what it reported to the Board. The FHG Insight, Transformation and Customer Service teams wanted to:
- Measure the right things
- Show interdependencies within customer journeys
- Demonstrate clear links to the corporate plan
- Be more flexible in what is reported each quarter
In short, it wanted to tell better stories with its performance data. Shed was brought in to help deliver this new reporting vision.
We held eight virtual workshops, each structured around key customer journeys. We discussed which questions we needed to answer to know whether we were delivering the corporate plan. This generated hundreds of questions. And after several rounds of rationalisation and prioritisation, we developed a short list of just 15 essential questions.
Once the sources to answer these questions had been identified, we developed the slide templates. Less was definitely more – we produced just four slides of rich content. This was all the Board needed to know.
We’ve now got a clear golden thread running through from our strategic objectives to how we report our performance
In February, the Board approved this new approach and feedback from Group Directors has been very positive. It’s now the new template for quarterly Board reports and will form the basis for performance reporting across for all governance levels of the business.
“As an insight team we are constantly delivering a broad range of information to answer questions from across the organisation, but often the gems discovered within these investigations get lost when we’re tied to a particular set of rigid measures by the time performance is reported to Board level. Shed’s efforts in helping us to really challenge ourselves as an organisation on what was (and was not) important really helped to align the understanding of all key stakeholders about what matters most – so for example rather than focusing on an individual repairs metric, we’re now bringing together information to demonstrate how we’re looking after our homes in general. We’ve now got a clear golden thread running through from our strategic objectives to how we report our performance, a clear template that encourages a storytelling approach, and an agreed mandate to flex where we shift the spotlight each quarter so as to keep our leadership team fully informed.” (Mel Hughes, Research & Intelligence Manager)
We hope this new approach to reporting sets the tone for FHG’s continued success.
You can hear all about the project from our AURA webinar here: