Who: Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the environmental body responsible for managing and protecting Wales’s natural resources.
The brief: I was commissioned to design and facilitate a full-day strategic away day for their board and executive team, bringing together 22 participants at their Bangor offices. NRW was at a pivotal moment: a new chair in post, a new Welsh Government incoming at the May elections, and a Corporate Plan running to 2030 that needed sharpening in the light of a fast-changing political and environmental landscape. The day needed to translate three expert intelligence inputs, on the political and policy context, public and stakeholder perceptions of NRW, and progress against the Corporate Plan, into shared priorities and a clearer sense of how board and executive team would work together to deliver them.
What I did: Working collaboratively with the NRW team, I designed a day that moved from insight to alignment, with a structured morning of expert presentations followed by two facilitated discussion rounds in the afternoon. The design balanced a plenary format (important for a new chair wanting to hear from everyone and build connections across the group) with dedicated thinking time before each discussion, so that contributions drew on the full depth of experience in the room.
On the day, I held the process so that the chair and CEO were free to be fully present in the content, and used structured go-rounds, visible capture and a light prioritisation moment to move the group from conversation towards shared agreement. Post-event, I produced a full set of workshop notes capturing the ideas, insights and offers of support that emerged across the day.
What they said: Members of the executive team and the chair himself offered positive comments and expressed satisfaction about the running of the day on the way out. One participant shared this which made me laugh so I had to make a note there and then: “I’ve been in other strategic meetings and they weren’t as well facilitated and they didn’t stay as much on track. And this one was even vaguely strategic! And that’s a big compliment!” 😀
