HITRANS, the Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership, is refreshing its Active Travel Strategy. The organisation’s Active Travel Officer, Vikki Trelfer, knew she could handle the technical content herself but wanted support engaging as many people as possible in the development of the strategy. Why did that matter? Our roving reporter, Ella set out to investigate…
Ella: What made you want to initially reach out to StrategyStory?
Vikki: So we decided that we needed to refresh our active travel strategy because so much has changed in the world since our last one. StrategyStory was recommended to me, and I thought the approach looked really interesting. I felt this was the team to help me engage with people to figure out the why and the what of our strategy refresh.
Ella: Was there anything particular that struck you about the approach?
Vikki: It was more like the general ethos Kate has, and I love the idea of a strategy as a story. Stories are much more engaging and compelling. Strategies so often sit on a shelf and get forgotten about.
Ella: So, what was it that you really wanted help with?
Vikki: I can do all the technical elements, but the vision, the objectives and what we’re going to deliver need additional input. That’s where I felt a bit stuck – I needed to ask people, but I just don’t have the time or experience to do that. So that was where Kate and the team fits in perfectly.
Ella: How did you find the process?
Vikki: The whole team really enjoyed taking part in it, and it’s made us as a team think a lot more about what we do and why we do it, and how we communicate what we do. And there were a lot of surprising things that came out of it that I wasn’t expecting – like HITRANS being the glue that connects so many other organisations. Nobody had ever sat with us and reflected with us like that before, so it was really interesting.
What did we do?
The workshops ran across multiple face-to-face and online sessions, facilitated by StrategyStory’s Director and Founder, Kate Hooper. Every session was built on Kate’s signature methodology – SPATM, which stands for Simplify, Personify, Amplify, and guides the structure of all exercises and delivered materials. In the case of HITRANS, this meant beginning with a simple, pointed question: what could this strategy could unlock?
Ella: What was it like to hear the perspectives of others in the engagement process?
Vikki: It was really nice, and it was lovely to have so much positive feedback from the people who took part in the engagement activities – from our board members to our local authority partners and other partners.
What did we do? The power of listening.
Capturing participant’s voices in carefully curated mini programmes was always a part of the ensured the person who’d eventually write the strategy could hear, directly,
how her colleagues and partners talked about the work.
“There were a lot of surprising things that came out of it that I wasn’t expecting”
Vikki Trelfer, Active travel Officer, HITRANS
Ella: Would you recommend StrategyStory?
Vikki: I would definitely recommend StrategyStory to our partners when they’re developing their strategy. It just makes it much more accessible to more people if you tell a strategy as story. Lots of strategies involve consultation and engagement, but so often the strategy is implemented, and people are left asking: why are you doing it like that?
It’s been a really reflective process, and Kate asks really good and sometimes difficult questions that really make you think and question everything that you do – but not in a bad way, in a good way.
I really enjoyed the process, and I never knew that creating a strategy could be so much fun!
Ella: Thanks Vikki. A pleasure to talk with you!
A story to watch… Vikki will spend the summer completing the draft strategy, before it goes out for wider partner consultation. And she is hopeful that a strategy built this way will draw a different quality of response than a conventional consultation typically attracts: “I’m hoping that we’ll get a lot of really interesting feedback from it,” she says, “as a result of having just a slightly different format.” She also wonders whether the experience may, gradually, shape how HITRANS communicates more broadly.
Like what you read?
StrategyStory is a Highlands-based strategic engagement consultancy that works with organisations to build strategies people recognise themselves in – gathered from the voices of the people who’ll have to deliver and live with them. If your organisation is looking to bring departments, partners or stakeholders into shaping a strategy, rather than informing them of one, get in touch and let’s talk about what that could look like.
