Community Services NFP

New Division Strategy

The Brief

Centrecare is a community services organisation offering outreach and specialised counselling services across Western Australia.

The organisation had decided to transition its Employee Assistance Program division as it no longer contributed to the organisation’s strategic or financial goals. The Board had approved a plan to establish a new division that retained staff and better aligned with the organisation’s values.

Executive leadership invited Beech + Willow to provide the next stage of transition planning, by identifying and exploring possibilities for what the new division could be and deliver, to support decision making on next steps.

The Delivery

An ambitious program of work was proposed to build a shared understanding of the learnings from the previous division’s operations, team capabilities, work pipeline and existing risks and/or constraints through interviews, analysis and hypothesis testing. A team workshop would be used to explore the new team’s strengths, aspirations, potential service offerings and demand for them. Insights from the workshop would be utilised to refine working hypotheses, before testing these with senior stakeholders and providing findings in a summary briefing.

Upon commencement, the timeline became more compressed and we adapted to ensure delivery as planned. Initial leadership interviews were used to guide an iterative process of market analysis and targeted questioning to develop working hypotheses about the new division. A team workshop was delivered to gather information through appreciative inquiry and the insights used to refine the hypotheses.

The Impact

A comprehensive report was delivered to the Director and General Manager of Centrecare, supported by a presentation to executive leadership. The report comprised the following sections:

  • Aspirations

  • Strengths and USP

  • Customer Needs

  • Supporting the new team

  • Market analysis of:

    • Clinical supervision

    • Cultural supervision

    • Adjacencies/aligned training

  • Strategic recommendations, tactical next steps and a proposed timeline approach

The report equipped the executive team with meaningful insights to determine how best to proceed, in a staged manner.