Developing high performing teams across North Central London ICB
The challenge
North Central London Integrated Care Board (NCL ICB) was born of successive mergers: five clinical commissioning groups came together in 2020, and further functions joined when the ICB itself was created in July 2022. A staff away day that December surfaced hard truths: people felt the organisation was not yet fit for purpose, and the vision was not always clear.
In early 2023 NCL launched an organisation-wide change programme to redesign itself around its new role and its population health strategy. During this demanding period the chief executive took an eight-month career break, changing the dynamic of the executive team at exactly the moment it needed to perform.
NCL ICB asked Kaleidoscope to help the newly restructured organisation stand up well and make a genuine new beginning:
- team-based coaching to help the executive team develop an effective dynamic through the interim period and the chief executive’s return
- a programme of team development for around 55 teams, built on our High Performing Teams framework
- a 400-participant staff away day to launch the new organisation.
Our approach
We began with a rigorous scoping phase with the executive lead, building a shared understanding of what success would look like and what might derail the work, with governance light enough to fit demanding diaries.
We used our High Performing Teams framework as the anchor: first in a workshop identifying the organisational shifts NCL needed, then as the basis of team development training across the whole organisation, helping newly formed teams reflect on their practice and take practical steps to improve. In parallel we ran a train-the-trainer programme so NCL’s own people could deliver the workshops confidently after our contract ended. We delivered in-person training to more than 500 team members over a rolling four-week period.
We co-designed the 400-participant staff away day that launched the new organisation, using insights from the workshops and conversations with senior leaders to help every directorate connect its plans to the new organisation’s purpose.
We worked closely with the interim chief executive and chief people officer on a series of executive coaching sessions, including a Myers Briggs Type Indicator feedback session for the executive team and 36 senior leaders, using it as a practical tool for understanding each other’s preferences and improving how the team performed together.
Results
Across the programme we trained more than 500 team members in four weeks, equipped NCL’s own trainers to keep the High Performing Teams work going without us, and brought 400 people together to launch the new organisation with a clear sense of shared purpose. The executive team was supported through the interim period and the chief executive’s smooth return, and the train-the-trainer model left NCL with a sustainable way to keep building high performing teams.