Navigating the pandemic

COVID-19’s numerous twists and turns have required a speedy and agile response from Pobl’s chair and her team

GOVERNANCE

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Wendy Bourton


Chair, Pobl

The pandemic has compressed everything you might do in a year as board chair into the immediate week, every week. It is tempting to say my role has changed, but that is not strictly true – it is the world that has changed.

My role description was always accurate, but in this most unique of years, every aspect of my role is brought vividly to life, as we navigate an ever-changing reality. It demands a speed and agility of decision-making that we have sustained as a leadership team as the months pass by, each containing a year’s worth of challenges. So what are the key lessons I take from the past eight to nine months?

Navigating through 2020 brings you up sharply at each twist and turn. Every decision has very real, immediate consequences and fresh frontiers are reached constantly. All of this is new, even the remarkable things that have rapidly become normal. As a chair, bringing focus to the energies and anxieties of fellow non-executives is task one – ensuring we use our time well, occupy the right space and add our maximum value.

Primary board focus

Our primary focus has been on keeping customers and colleagues safe, making difficult calls that balance the need for distance along with the inherently physical, human nature of our services. Putting those new rules and new ways into practice has demanded much of our teams, who have shown huge professionalism, discipline and a capacity to cope with PPE that I would struggle to match.

I should not be surprised that our team has met these challenges superbly. Everyone has lived our values throughout the pandemic, going above and beyond to reach the vulnerable and keep homes safe, making personal sacrifices to provide care and support at the most difficult of times.

While it was heartening to see keyworkers, including our own, clapped and recognised through the spring lockdown, it is equally disheartening that no tangible steps have been taken to better value their work. Just as the NHS braces for a long, hard winter, so too does our trained, professional and devoted care and support team. It is a matter of national shame that their reward is the minimum and I am resolved to do all I can to champion their cause, because it is all of our cause.

Pobl’s young people’s support service in Pontypool keeping positive and creative during Lockdown in May

Welsh lockdown

At the time of writing, Wales is preparing itself for another national lockdown. Colleagues act to make sense of the latest guidance, interpret what it means for our customers and colleagues, then communicate with clarity. None of this would happen without a culture of trust. We would be paralysed by panic at each twist, our board meetings would be reactive and operational – slower than events in our communities.

Thankfully, trust is in plentiful supply at Pobl. This is the dividend of doubling down in recent years on a culture of shared endeavour. As a board we have focused entirely on the strategic space, looking beyond the now, while our people get on with making a difference – and how they have.

“The pandemic may be the challenge today but there are great places and homes to make, carbon to cut and a decade ahead in which we will make a greater difference than ever before”

Future focus

This week we launch our ambitions for the decade ahead; bold ambitions that haven’t been parked or watered down while the pandemic plays out. I am immensely proud that we are maintaining that future focus, providing certainty for our colleagues, customers and partners at a time of anxiety and flux. The pandemic may be the challenge today but there are great places and homes to make, carbon to cut and a decade ahead in which we will make a greater difference than ever before.

The pandemic will leave some positive legacy whatever its ultimate toll. I am confident we will emerge as an organisation that is closer to each other and to customers, that has switched paradigms from offices to agility and which has the muscle memory to tackle whatever comes our way. There is no doubt I have faced challenges I couldn’t have anticipated as 2020 began, but I am part of a team that has met them head on. My abiding feeling is of privilege to chair an organisation whose purpose and role has never been so relevant.

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