Playing our part: one year onThursday 12.11.2015, Calke Abbey

A summary of key messages from the Leadership Conference

Summary on a pageThank you for a great year!Hilary McGrady, Director of Operations & Consultancy

We’ve delivered record-breaking performance – and begun shaping ourselves for the future.

Bringing our People Strategy to lifeTina Lewis, Director of People & Legal Services

How can you help us share our people plans so your people understand their role in bringing our strategy to life?

Creating Experiences that Move, Teach and InspireSimon Murray, Senior Director of Strategy, Curatorship & External AffairsTony Berry, Visitor Experience Director

Our vision for creating experiences that drive greater emotional engagement and lasting support

Looking after the places where people liveSimon Murray, Senior Director of Strategy, Curatorship & External Affairs

A summary of our Places programme

A healthy & beautiful natural environment for everyonePeter Nixon, Director of Land, Landscape & Nature

Our vision for looking after land, landscapes and nature

Land, Outdoors & Nature priorities for regionsPeter Nixon, Director of Land, Landscape & NaturePatrick Begg, Rural Enterprises Director

Next steps on the programme for our regional teams

Resources:‘Playing our part’ – one year on videoHilary McGrady’s conference session videoOutput s from the listening sessions

Thank you for a great year!It’s been a record-breaking year for the Trust – and we’ve all played our part. Alongside our fantastic performance, we’ve made strong a strong start on our ambitious ten-year strategy to deliver what the nation needs from us in the 21st Century.

In the first session of the day, Hilary McGrady paid tribute to our achievements. We think we’re very fond of talking here in the Trust, but over the past twelve months we’ve shown our collective ability to get the job done. We’re focused on the things that matter, our KPIs tell us we’re doing the right things, and alongside this the improved systems, processes and collaborative, consistent ways of working we’ve started to put in place will help our great people do an even better job in future.

Hilary’s listening sessions around our regions have highlighted much that’s going well, and areas for us to improve. Exec owners have been assigned to make progress on every one of those areas.We remain focused on the ‘Looking after what we’ve got’ element that is the bulk of our day-to-day work – and our KPIs show we’re doing a great job. We have in place 17 priority actions for properties to ensure we do the right things.Alongside this, we’ve proved we have the capability to deliver strategic improvement. We’ve made great progress terms of membership, marketing, and systems & processes. There’s a lot more to do, and in other areas we’re at earlier stages.We will create consistently better ways of working, and the delegated framework gives us a model for ensuring GMs are able to get on with the job in hand. The key to delivering our integrated ambitions will be collaboration between our people, and when we do that we can achieve great things.

Resources:Our People StrategyPeople Strategy videoLeadership Values & BehavioursTina Lewis’ conference session video

Leaders’ commitments from the conferenceAt the conference, we talked about putting into action the leadership values and behaviours that we need to make our people strategy real. As leaders, we all have a really important role to play to support , engage and inspire our people. We need to ‘walk the talk’. Here are a few points to help get you started:

How can you help us cascade the strategy, so our people understand and engage with it – what’s your role in bringing it to life?How can you live and role model the leadership values & behaviours on a daily basis, helping create the climate of success – setting the standard for others to follow?How can you help embed the people processes which are the foundation of the strategy – great performance leadership, robust succession planning, access to career paths, consistent completion of MYplace processes etc?

Resources:Simon Murray’s and Tony Berry’s conference session videos

Creating Experiences that Move, Teach and InspireSimon Murray shared our vision for creating experiences that drive greater emotional engagement and lasting support. To achieve this, we’re moving away from a centrally led programme towards a facilitated and collaborative endeavour across the organisation. Our aim is to create a shared vision for everyone to work towards and an environment within which innovative experiences can flourish.

Our vision remains the same.Our places already provide great days out for millions of people, but there’s clear evidence that we will only build lasting support if we can engage more people at an emotional and spiritual level.We need to create even more active experiences which are hands on and minds on for our visitors. Dunham, Upton and Dyrham are three places that point to the future, but there are many others of all shapes and sizes across the organisation.We’ll be focusing more on public programming in the future to help us deliver living experiences which are constantly refreshing, both at our properties and beyond our boundaries.

Our vision:“We will give our visitors experiences that are emotionally rewarding, intellectually stimulating and inspire them to support our cause, both through supporting the National Trust directly and taking what we stand for into their own lives”.

Resources:Simon Murray’s conference session video

Looking after the places where people liveSimon Murray shared our progress so far with the new Places programme. This is still very much in the thinking and early testing stages, so you do not need to take any direct action. We would simply like everybody to understand our progress to date.

Our Places programme is in the early stages of testing new ways of working to secure a future for local green space and urban heritage.In Sheffield, we have started to explore ways of creating a secure financial future for Sheffield’s parks.In Manchester, we have been building relationships with local communities, businesses and the city council to understand what makes it a special place and what our role might be in looking after local heritage.We are going to build on the momentum we are already seeing by putting more emphasis on heritage open days going forward as it’s a fantastic opportunity to engage people in local heritage.

Resources:Peter Nixon’s conference session videoLand, Outdoors & Nature programme

A healthy & beautiful natural environment for everyonePeter Nixon brought alive the urgent challenges our landscape and environment face in the 21st Century and set out a clear vision of the Trust’s role in meeting them.

The story has roots stretching back to the industrial revolution, through huge population growth and ever-increasing demands on our land to today’s reality of soil erosion, declining native wildlife populations and intensive farming practices.

But the conclusion is engaging and optimistic: Peter highlighted examples of what we’ve already achieved in restoring landscapes and supporting wildlife populations, and mapped out a journey based on presenting solutions, building partnerships and influencing beyond our borders to promote a holistic approach to land management which balances all the functions we need from it. Crucially, it’s the experience we offer people of our outdoor places which will inspire them to care for our landscape as passionately as we do:

The key messages:

The strategy is addressing the right conservation challenge for the nation.Our aim is very clear: land that is healthy, beautiful, rich in nature and culture, enjoyed by many, and productive.We’re not trying to do everything everywhere. We have a clear distinction between doing, testing and thinking.

Resources:Patrick Begg’s conference session videoLand Choices GuideLand Choices intranet pages

Land, Outdoors & Nature actions for regionsSupporting our strategic aim of restoring healthy, beautiful natural environment, these are the actions our regional leadership teams have been asked to prioritise for the Land, Outdoors & Nature programme. Patrick Begg gave an update on the programme and, specifically, the tools we’re using to achieve a balanced approach to land management.

Your ADO or ADC can tell you more about what this means in the place where you work, and these are the key points which we’ve asked regional leadership teams to focus on:

Land condition – identify top priorities by May 2016 – using your Land Condition Assessment and the Land Choices guide.Landscapes – use your spotlight project to demonstrate joined up partnership working.Experiences and activities – continue to develop Explore properties, identifying possible new ones with potential for catering, membership and at least one special activity.