Joette is delighted to be facilitating a ‘new and vital’ conversation, as health and housing begin their efforts to work in a more integrated way – bringing housing firmly into the health and social care integration agenda.

Richard’s is stepping back from being a partner in Animate but will remain an Animate Associate. A focus on larger, longer-term projects, improving organisational systems and processes will be absorbing much of his time but he’ll continue to work with us, on current and future pieces of work.

In 25 years of working as an organisational development consultant, I have never heard anyone say that they enjoy meetings, or that they want more meetings. Quite the contrary, almost every week I hear people tell me that they go too many meetings, that meetings don’t achieve anything and that they can’t get anything done for the amount of meetings they have.

A recent Localis report ‘Rebooting Health and Social Care Integration: An agenda for more person centred care’ includes the following insight from a former Department of Health adviser:

“If you’re flying to Singapore, but have to change airlines en route, at no point does anyone suggest the airlines merge. We put the passenger in charge and the airlines build it around them.”

In this moment in the early 21st century, this moment of #metoo, #oxfamsexscandal, Harvey Weinstein and a host of other issues which have put women’s lack of equality in the workplace and public life on the front page, it is refreshing to see the Scottish Government mandating that women are equally represented on Scotland’s public boards. I am, however, left with a question about what difference this change is intended to make … other than getting onto a front page?

We’ve been asked by Andrea Pearson, a freelance journalist, to contribute to a series of articles reflecting on ‘big ideas’ in the news. The first one was published a couple of weeks ago in the Herald Business magazine. In it, Animate partner Jo adds her reflections on the idea of a Universal Basic Income to those of business leaders from across sectors. 

Animating Assets was a research and learning project that explored what difference working in asset-based way made in communities and services.

How can we help leaders to work more inclusively and to develop more diverse workplaces? That was the question Jo from Animate and Oonagh from Down to Earth explored on a snowy day in February. What were the three things they identified? Read on to find out…

Animate partners Joette and Jo became Improvement Associates with Health Improvement Scotland last year. Here they reflect on their experiences and learning.