Turning an ambitious plan for nature into reality

The Scenario: In 2020, the Board of Forest & Bird created a five-year strategic plan for nature, identifying the environmental outcomes they wanted the organisation to achieve. When Nicola Toki became the new CE of Forest & Bird in 2022, she saw an opportunity to accelerate progress towards achieving those outcomes using a new way of working.

MSH’s Solution: We worked to develop the implementation of Forest & Bird’s strategy in a way that allowed them to turn their ambitions and passion into reality by creating a strategic implementation process that clearly outlined what they were wanting to achieve, how they would achieve it, and a reporting system that would monitor progress over time. By redesigning their operational strategy to centre around delivering on the aspirations of the 5 strategic outcomes for nature using MSH’s Steps 1-4, Forest & Bird are now able to see a clear pathway to success and better understand their impact on nature.

Transforming the health and wellbeing of Te Kāhui Tupua

The Scenario: Taranaki Mounga began as a restoration project focussed on outcomes like eradicating pests and reintroducing native birds, but the Board saw potential for the project to incorporate economic, social, and cultural benefits for Taranaki and its people. However, there wasn’t a clear path forward to achieve this aspirational goal as initial plans were focussed on ecological outcomes.

MSH’s Solution: A strategy that lays out a pathway to deliver ecological, economic, social, and cultural benefits to the Taranaki region which enabled the people of Taranaki to reconnect to their whakapapa, themselves, and nature itself. The holistic approach united the network of project partners to achieve the vision, “He Kawa Ora – Sustaining the health and wellbeing of Te Kāhui Tupua and their people”, and deliver on the expectations of iwi and other stakeholders.

Creating a clear path forward

The Scenario: Taumata Arowai is the new water services regulator for Aotearoa. It was faced with the challenge of becoming an exemplar of modern regulation for Aotearoa, taking its lead from Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Mana o te Wai to drive a holistic view of water services management.

The strategy helped provide direction and certainty for the leadership team, enhancing their credibility and enabling them to easily articulate their position during discussions with their Board and Minister. It also allowed them to make decisions around priorities and provided a programme of activities delivering on both their shortterm and longer-term objectives.

From fighting fires to driving strategic growth

The Scenario: As Nicholson Autos started to grow and expand it was faced with the challenge of retaining its family business feel while still driving the business forward at the same time. The Nicholson team recognised they needed a strategy management system to keep them on track for achieving their aspirations.

MSH’s Solution: We worked together on developing a strategic plan that built on Nicholson’s existing success but put structure and processes in place. This meant they could continue growing and opening more locations in the medium to short-term, as well as looking at some of the longer-term challenges such as succession planning.

The Scenario: CCC’s IT team needed a new organisational structure to significantly simplify how customers engaged with them, and enable services to be delivered faster and more efficiently.

MSH's Solution: We worked with the CIO to understand their personal leadership style, and incorporated these views in a new structure which aligned with their strategy and delivered better results for their customers.

A Practical Strategy Approach for Resource-Constrained Organisations

The Scenario: The BBNZ management team were challenged with how to implement initiatives to achieve BBNZ’s strategic vision while executing the day-to-day activities of the organisation to serve its members.

MSH's Solution: A practical strategy framework which provided common ground for the Board, management and staff, and addressed challenges common to resource-constrained organisations.

Enabling the Vision of the New Zealand School of Dance

The Scenario: As one of Australasia’s leading dance training institutions, the NZSD knew that to achieve their vision of producing exceptional classical and contemporary dancers, they would need to convert their wishlist to clear initiatives that both the Board and management team could agree on.

MSH's Solution: We used our four-step strategy process to Unify, Map, Align and Embed a strategic plan for NZSD. This has led to more focused and robust conversations with the Board, enabling the School to get buy-in at all levels to move their vision from today to what they want to be tomorrow.

Halve new business application timeframes

The Scenario: Prior to being aquired by AMP, AXA was one of the largest providers of life insurance services in New Zealand with over 270,000 customers paying AXA over $200m each year in premiums. AXA experienced long delays in application timeframes for processing new business, with an average of 35 days from customer meeting to completion. AXA approached MSH Consulting to identify areas where processes were failing and implement change initiatives to reduce processing times.

MSH's Solution: MSH Consulting undertook workshops involving AXA’s underwriting, new applications and business processing teams. Together they identified the 10 key value drivers that impact on timeframes. This provided the fuel for MSH Consulting to develop a concise end-to-end model that provided clarity on where time was best spent. They then designed and implemented actionable initiatives to streamline processes. As a result processing times halved from 35 days to 15 days, 65% of Advisor businesses said that AXA’s service offering was faster and more accurate and over half of them expected to place more business with AXA as a result.