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What the client said
First and foremost: a depth of experience and confidence in managing the cultural challenge we were facing. They diagnosed correctly the work that was needed and adapted their approach when required.
Second: great facilitation skills to manage some complex stakeholder workshops and seminars: David and Lydia were engaging and warm, had a positive demeanour and at the same time were not afraid to challenge
Third: excellent report writing skills: well-pitched content, positively and sensitively articulated. Content designed to create cohesion rather than outline rifts.
Deep expertise and commitment. Great approach. Worth every penny.
Alexia Tonnel - Director of Programmes, The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The challenge
The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust needed to strengthen culture across its maternity and neonatal services following a CQC report which had raised concerns around safety, with culture recognised as part of the picture.
The service needed to better understand what staff were experiencing day to day, where communication and relationships were breaking down, and what conditions were needed for people to speak up, work well together and provide safe, high-quality care.
The challenge was not simply to diagnose the problem or gather feedback. It was to create a different kind of conversation between staff and leaders — one that could surface honest insight and help people co-design the culture they wanted to move towards.
What we did
We designed and facilitated a series of culture workshops with staff and leaders across maternity and neonatal services.
The workshops created space for people to explore what was working, what felt difficult, and what needed to change in the culture of the service. They focused on themes including psychological safety, communication, team relationships, leadership, speaking up and how people experienced work across professional groups.
Importantly, the work brought staff and leaders into the same conversation. This helped move the process beyond consultation, towards shared reflection and co-design.
We then synthesised the outputs from the workshops into clear themes and insights, which were brought into a final leadership seminar. In that session, leaders interpreted what had emerged from staff and used it to explore what the findings meant for their own leadership, their priorities, and the next stage of improvement work.
What changed
The process gave the service a clearer, more grounded picture of the cultural conditions affecting safety, trust, communication and collaboration.
It helped staff and leaders have conversations that had not previously happened in that way — creating space for honesty, reflection and shared ownership.
The leadership seminar helped senior leaders translate staff insight into practical implications for how they needed to lead going forward. The outputs then informed the service’s next steps, planning and wider improvement work.
Our 'special sauce' on this project
The value we brought was the ability to hold a sensitive culture process with care, neutrality and structure.
Bringing staff and leaders together in this way was new for the service, and needed to be handled delicately. People needed to feel safe enough to speak honestly, while leaders needed to feel confident that the conversation would be constructive and useful.
We created a process that made that possible.
We brought together culture change expertise, psychological safety, skilled facilitation and strong sense-making — helping the service move from concern and feedback into clearer leadership action and practical improvement.
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