Helping a leading private mental healthcare provider challenge, refine and commit to a growth strategy

Key takeaways

A large UK independent healthcare provider was at an inflection point and needed to sharpen its strategy after significant policy change and margin pressure. CF was commissioned to help the Board reach that decision inside a compressed timetable.

We designed and facilitated a Board Strategy Away Day, supported by individual interviews, an analysis of the markets realistically open to the business, and a six-criteria prioritisation framework.

This facilitation helped the Board narrow ten growth opportunities down to three agreed priorities, each with 90, 180 and 365-day delivery plans.

With a consistent method for assessing opportunities and an evidence base for the business cases that follow, the Board came out of the day aligned on a small number of choices it could actually resource and deliver.

What was the challenge?

The organisation faced a set of unresolved strategic choices, including:

Where to place its weight: defending and rebuilding the core business, or building something adjacent to it
Which payors and customer types to prioritise, and which to step back from
Whether to build, buy or partner for the capabilities any new direction would require

CF was commissioned to facilitate a Board Strategy Away Day to align the Board and Executive Committee on strategic direction, prioritise growth opportunities across multiple payors and service lines, and develop delivery plans for the organisation’s top strategic priorities ahead of finalising its strategy within six months.

What did we do, and what made our approach different?

CF facilitated a comprehensive strategic prioritisation exercise to help the Board and Executive Committee identify, evaluate, and plan for their top growth opportunities in response to significant policy change and margin pressure. The main deliverable was a facilitated Board Strategy Away Day with supporting analysis, culminating in three agreed strategic priorities with 90-, 180-, and 365-day delivery plans.

Our role was to create the conditions in which the Board could decide. That meant bringing independent evidence to the table, testing assumptions held across the leadership group, surfacing disagreement early rather than late, and holding the group to a small number of choices it could actually resource and deliver.

Our methodology was split across three distinct phases:

1. Pre-work and discovery

Conducted structured interviews with all Board members and Executive Committee to understand perspectives on the organisation’s distinctive capabilities, market opportunities, and strategic concerns
Developed a comprehensive analysis of the market landscape, covering every service line the organisation could credibly enter and every payor type open to it, from public sector commissioners to consumers, insurers, employers and international buyers
Created pre-read exercises using Mentimeter to capture initial Board views on market dynamics, pricing pressures, and capability assessments

2. Strategic framework development

Designed a prioritisation framework structured around six criteria: service effectiveness, business model fit, willingness to pay, route to market, ability to compete effectively, and wider system impact
Mapped ten potential opportunities across payor and service line combinations, providing detailed analysis of market attractiveness, stability, and certainty for each

3. Facilitated the Board Strategy Away Day

Led a full-day workshop with iterative voting exercises to narrow from ten opportunities to three strategic priorities
For each shortlisted opportunity, we facilitated structured discussions covering: market attractiveness, route to market, capabilities required, build vs buy decisions, and degree of strategic stretch
Developed success criteria for Year 1 and Year 3 (internal and external), identifying the primary risks for each priority

What was the impact?

Immediate outcomes: The Board Strategy Away Day created clear strategic alignment across the organisation’s leadership, resulting in three growth opportunities with 90, 180 and 365-day delivery plans with core milestones to be achieved for each priority.

The strategic framework we developed applies to future opportunities so leadership now has a consistent method for assessing what comes next. The market analysis also gives the board an evidence base for the business cases that follow, rather than commissioning that work again in six months.

The board also holds a record of what it considered and rejected, with the reasoning attached. That record is what allows it to answer why the organisation is not pursuing an option someone has raised again.

Why an external partner

A Board rarely needs to be told what its options are. What it needs is someone from outside the room to test the thinking it already has, name the trade-offs it has been avoiding, and hold it to a decision. That is the work an external partner does.

Independent challenge

We test the strategy a leadership team believes it already has, using evidence rather than opinion, so the decisions survive contact with the market.

Structure for complex choices

A transparent prioritisation framework turns a long list of options into a ranked set the Board can debate on consistent criteria.

Facilitation that reaches a decision

Iterative voting and structured discussion move a group from broad agreement to specific, owned commitments within a single day.

A route from vision to execution

Each priority leaves the room with success criteria, named risks, an owner and delivery plan.

To speak to one of our specialists about our Health Investing capabilities, contact us today.

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