

Summer
Story
Season
2025


Summer
Story
Season
2025
In three eye-opening sessions this summer we heard real stories from organisations that have challenged traditional structures – ditching rigid planning cycles, removing hierarchies, and embracing more agile, output-focussed ways of working.
We heard how charities are creating cultures of learning, collaboration and accountability by empowering teams, decentralising decision-making, and adapting in real time to changing needs.
Each session offered honest insights, practical tools and fresh thinking to help you lead differently – no matter your role or starting point. If you’re feeling stuck in outdated ways of working, or simply want to explore a more agile approach, check out the session recordings below.
You’ll leave inspired, equipped, and ready to make meaningful change, without waiting for permission.
Agile Against the Current: Working in New Ways, When No One Else Is
Shaila Varma, British Red Cross
Experimenting with new ways of working – when everyone around you is doing what they’ve always done – might be daunting, but the pay-off can be huge!
Our first Summer Story Season conversation was full of amazing insights into how to use agile ways of work to collaboratively develop strategy, and bring people with you on the way.


Safe Enough to Try: Radically Empowering and De-siloing Teams
Yolande, CliniClowns Netherlands
23 July 12:00 BST
Imagine a non-profit with 100+ staff, no hierarchy of people, minimal sign-off processes and no line managers. Imagine each employee is accountable for delivering their own work and the whole organisation is radically focused on creating impact. Watch the replay below to see how CliniClowns Netherlands has done just that.


A Whole New World: Ditching the Annual Business Plan
Rosie Leatherland, Amnesty International UK
13 August 12:00 BST
What would you give to never have to do annual business planning from scratch year on year? All those stressful deadlines, tense conversations with colleagues and stabs in the dark about what will be possible in the coming year, gone? That’s exactly what Amnesty International UK did, replacing it instead with an ongoing process of quarterly reflection, learning and constant evolution of multi-year plans. Watch the replay to see how:



