The Challenge

Breast Cancer Now (BCN) set out to create a new strategy that could go further than ever before, one that was bold, ambitious, and sharply focused on outcomes.

But this wasn’t just about strategy on paper. The process needed to:

• Involve a broad cross-section of staff and people with lived experience.

• Help the charity prioritise with confidence—choosing what to stop, start, and scale.

• Set clear direction while still allowing autonomy for four goal-focused working groups.

• Be bold, but not disruptive for disruption’s sake.

• Create a tool for fundraising, story-telling, and stakeholder confidence.

• All while managing time and headspace in a period of wider transformation.

The Objective

To support Breast Cancer Now in creating an outcomes-focused, future-proofed organisational strategy that:

• Aligns around a shared vision and measurable goals.

• Prioritises effectively using clear go/no-go criteria.

• Involves and respects the input of a large and diverse group of internal and external stakeholders.

Sets up the charity to communicate its unique role in the breast cancer ecosystem with confidence and clarity.

The Approach

Over a multi-month collaboration, we worked alongside Breast Cancer Now’s transformation and leadership teams to co-facilitate a five-stage strategy process:

1. Pre-Workshop Alignment
   Early interviews and planning sessions surfaced key tensions, including how to balance ambition with delivery, and how to manage decision-making dynamics. We helped shape a shared “burning platform” and set the foundations for collaboration.

2. Workshop 1 – Setting Strategy Principles and Assessment Criteria
   We worked with senior stakeholders to define the organisational principles that would guide every future decision, and a simple, shared assessment framework to prioritise action.

3. Workshop 2 – Future Scenario Planning
   Our Futures team built five strategic scenarios—from conservative to radical—to help the team stress test their assumptions and define a clear picture of Breast Cancer Now’s future role in the cancer landscape.

4. Workshop 3 – Defining Goals
   Using insight from a ‘state of the nation’ report and organisational data, we facilitated a session to prioritise audience needs and BCN’s unique capabilities, leading to a first set of organisational goals.

Workshops 4 & 5 – Prioritising Activities and Accelerators
Finally, we supported ideation and evaluation across goal groups—ensuring the resulting activities were outcome-driven, feasible, and aligned with the core strategy. In the final session, we defined key enablers (leadership, culture, capabilities) and built a roadmap to bring it all to life.

The Impact

• A clearly articulated vision and strategy, co-created across teams and lived experience representatives.

• A prioritised portfolio of goals and activities, with broad buy-in and strategic clarity.

• New behavioural and decision-making principles, making future conversations more focused and inclusive.

• A strategy that’s both outcome-driven and fundraiser-friendly—helping BCN tell a compelling story about the change it exists to make.

This process not only set strategic direction—it built confidence, alignment and leadership around delivering it.