Some new year reflections, and ambitions for 2025

Happy new year everyone… here’s what I’m looking to achieve in 2025.

1.    I’d like to come away from every charity I support feeling I’ve made a positive difference to how it works and to the people it helps.

When I set up my consultancy, I always knew I wanted to work specifically with health and science charities. That’s because it’s the area I’m passionate about, and where I feel I have the expertise to contribute.

I’d like to help every charity I work with to make real strategic choices that direct resources in the best possible way, and ultimately change lives.

I’d hope especially to help health and science charities get better at communicating their ambitions for their research, so they can enthuse their communities, drive progress where they can have most impact, and inspire support.

2.    I hope to make the case that charities need strategies that are not only smart, but also tell a compelling story about what they intend to do.

I don’t think it should be a case of taking a technical strategy document and prettifying it for public consumption. You can’t separate out a strategy from the words it uses to articulate what it aims to achieve.

A fundamental purpose of a strategy is to motivate, to marshal effort and resources, and to persuade your partners and stakeholders to get on board.  That kind of storytelling and passion should not be bolted on… it is just as important as the specific strategic decisions you make.

3.    I’d like to expand my own personal networks. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about my year and a bit in consultancy so far is the chance I’ve had to work with fantastic people at various different charities.

I’ve learned a lot from them, and hopefully I’ve been useful to them too. I’d like to do more of that, and I hope to stay in touch with some of the people I meet, and to be able to work with them again in future perhaps in different contexts.

In some ways, the world of health and science is huge and exciting, with horizons that stretch across the planet and into the future. But in other ways it’s much smaller… a community where we all seem to bump into each other eventually, and where there’s a real sense of shared passion for making people’s lives better.

Long may that continue during 2025.