Would you like to find out more about the ‘Our Journey’ conferences? Just give Craig a shout as he loves a chat on the success of our partnership work with the University of Nottingham.
The University of Nottingham Finance Team wanted to build on the great work already undertaken on their finance strategy, known as ‘Our Journey’. This was about constantly building and embedding their culture, which enabled the Finance Team to be the best version of themselves and work even more effectively as one team.
Their challenge was to empower and drive forward their teams, to deliver their strategy, in an engaging, innovative and passionate way. They needed support as they progressed on the delivery of the ‘Our Journey’ strategy and asked Rambutan, as behavioural experts, to help them develop leaders to empower their teams to live ‘Our Journey’.
We worked with the Finance Team, engaging and developing the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) in how they could work more effectively as a team and deliver on their strategy. We coached their SLT to step back from the detail, think even more as leaders and empower their teams, by encouraging them to find solutions and become more self-sufficient and accountable.
We ran a series of workshops and facilitated sessions, which helped leaders to own, implement and support others with change, and focus on how they can become the best version of themselves. Each year, the whole of the Finance Team came together to spend time connecting with each other, reflecting on progress and working together as one team. The annual ‘Our Journey’ conference certainly had a ‘wow’ factor, which we achieved by coaching and developing the SLT to take accountability, and build their confidence and competence in delivering the conference themselves. The content was built around supporting each other through change and continuous improvement, to enable everyone to work smarter, slicker and more effectively as one joined-up finance community.
The approach we partnered on to continue the delivery of the ‘Our Journey’ strategy was so amazingly successful that the Finance Team are all now living and breathing the values that drive their culture, with even higher levels of engagement to deliver their finance strategy. More people are talking about ‘Our Journey’, thinking about continuous improvement and chatting about and living the values that drive their culture.
The whole Finance Team are taking responsibility for delivering their ‘Our Journey’ strategy, stepping up and shining in their roles. In fact, ‘Our Journey’ is what happens every day; it’s the way the finance community think, behave, impact each other, and deliver great results focused on continuous improvement.
We worked with the SLT, delving deep into how they could improve their leadership skills, through facilitated sessions and one-to-one coaching. For example, we focused on adopting a coaching leadership style, to increase empowerment and enable the space for their teams to step up and find their own solutions. We also encouraged the SLT to think about the outcome they wanted to drive, and to support their teams to find the answer as to how they’ll achieve it.
Our coaching helped the SLT to both lead and manage themselves more effectively, and improve how they lead their teams. We helped them to consider the mindset they choose, by looking forward as opposed to looking back. Members of the SLT went on to run sessions with their teams focused on how they live their values every day and identifying core priorities they could all work on as one team within ‘Our Journey’.
Each ‘Our Journey’ conference focused on key themes that were designed to help all of the Finance Team develop to be the best version of themselves every day. We dived into and explored subjects such as:
Another big area we focused on was change and transition. We supported everyone to create their own strategy to enable them to navigate upcoming changes and be able to identify when their colleagues needed a hand. This became an ongoing focus for the SLT and their teams following the conference and was discussed during one-to-ones and team meetings.
All the way through, we worked in true partnership with the Finance Team to celebrate success and continued to be agile for any changing needs.
“At the University, we’re currently implementing new systems which are changing the way that our finance community operates, so they can deliver even more effectively in supporting the wider University and serving our University colleagues. The best part… the work with Rambutan on ‘Our Journey’ has stopped being an entity. It’s now just the way we do things around here. It’s positively impacting the culture and all our people are more aligned with our values. It’s created an even better place to work. Thank you, Rambutan, for being so awesome.”
Sally Blackamore, Director of Finance