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'Living It' - March 2009

Congratulations to the March Living It Award Winners!

Congratulations to two exceptional BEST Leaders who have jointly won the BEST Leader of the Month Living It Award for March. Joy Cahill from Planning and Regeneration from the Development & Culture Directorate and Rachel Hinton from Corporate Policy & Performance Team, from the Chief Executives Directorate both impressed the panel of judges to scoop March’s award.

Joy has set up a leader network within her service area to help other leaders by providing support and demonstrating what can be achieved if you fully get involved in the process. Colleagues that have attended her sessions have been able to share not only learning from the BEST process but also concerns and success stories in a safe environment. Joy has worked tirelessly to make sure that her team celebrate their successes not only within their unit but publicly raising the profile of her team. As a leader Joy demonstrates real trust, her team know that they can talk to her about anything and have complete confidence in her discretion; she works hard to build and maintain productive working relationships and has worked closely with the BEST Programme Team to help provide solutions for other teams who have had difficulty in adopting BEST. Joy’s team nominated her for her unfailing ability to look at all situations and find the positives.

Rachel was nominated by members of her team for the way in which she has not only embraced the BEST process but encouraged the rest of her team to do the same. One of the ways that Rachel has encouraged this is by creating her own monthly BEST awards for her team which are given out at meetings. There are four awards based on each of the core values, these are Bacon Belief, Excellent Egg, Successful Sausage and Ketchup on Trust with the team actually creating hand made trophies and even writing a poem about the values; this has encouraged a sense of fun surrounding BEST within the team. Rachel also shows trust by involving the rest of the team in making decisions around BEST. Her team feel that she is always honest about what she thinks and feels and will say the same messages to your face as well as when you are not there. Rachel has been instrumental in integrating BEST into core activity and regularly makes suggestions for improvements.

The March Manager of the Month Living It Award was awarded to John Murtagh from the Highways Department in Development. John’s team will openly admit that there was negativity surrounding BEST when it was first introduced, but John’s belief, trust and commitment to his team brought real successes and outcomes that we see on our streets today. John got his team to agree that the past was the past and that they were all committed to moving forward. With this important step out of the way the team were able to move on and come up with many constructive actions including some surrounding signage used for roadworks which lead to efficiency savings and an increase in both staff and public safety. John helped to raise the profile of the team at Thimble Mill Lane by being invited along with some of his staff to demonstrate their actions at a Senior Manager’s Network Marketplace at the ICC and discussing the improvements that his team had made with Stephen Hughes, the Chief Executive.

Finally winners of the Living It Award for BEST Team of the Month were the Strategy Team from Corporate Procurement Services. This team have really used BEST to enhance their daily working practices and incorporated target setting into BEST as one of their actions. The team also looked at the communications within their unit and felt that a great deal more could be made of ‘Local Brief’. This document has now been substantially improved not only having undergone a face lift but receiving more contributions than ever from all sections of Corporate Procurement Services. Through this process staff knowledge and understanding has increased creating a great feeling of trust within the team.

The BEST Programme Team would like to congratulate all of the winners for March on their successes. If you would like to nominate someone or are looking for more information regarding the Monthly Living It Awards please contact Lucy Kenny or email best@birmingham.gov.uk on Lotus Notes. You can also find the nomination forms on our Resources page.