Richard Woodward

Strategic Planning Facilitator, Business Development & Sponsorship Training

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Strategic planning & workshop facilitation with Richard Woodward

Richard Woodward

To move your organisation forward, you need a highly effective strategic planning facilitator with a proven process. You need an experienced strategic planning facilitator who’s highly adept at engaging your people to discuss the challenges they face and identify solutions.

Especially when your organisation is undergoing a period of rapid growth or change, or is facing specific challenges, it’s imperative that you’ve considered the relevant questions and developed the right strategic plan to guide the organisation towards a successful future.

You need a strategic planning facilitator who skillfully leads discussions while soliciting insights from your team members, generating robust, productive debate on the challenges facing your organisation and igniting the strategic thinking of your entire team.

In this short video Richard discusses how to run an effective strategic planning workshop

Richard Woodward: expert facilitator with real world experience

Richard has 32 years’ experience working with leading organisations across Australia, the UK and New Zealand. The first half of Richard’s career was spent working in senior business development and marketing roles in leading organisations in Australia and UK such as KPMG, Royal Automobile Club, the Commonwealth Bank, Stadium Australia and Sydney Opera House. The last 17 years Richard has spent facilitating strategy workshops and providing business development training to leading organisations across Australia as well as overseas.

This is a robust strategic planning and workshop facilitation process developed through Richard’s significant experience facilitating workshops for a wide variety of corporate, government and not-for-profit organisations across different sectors and industries.

Organisations Richard has facilitated for include:

  • Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade
  • Museum of Contemporary Art
  • National Archives of Australia
  • City Renewal Authority - Canberra
  • Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority
  • Australasian Association of Nuclear Medicine Specialists
  • Children’s Medical Research Institute
  • Wenona School
  • Biennale of Sydney
  • National Electrical & Communications Association
  • Kerfoot
  • Queensland Ballet
  • St.Vincent's Curran Foundation
  • West Australian Ballet
  • UQ Sport
  • UTS Child Care
  • SDN Children's Services
  • Community Foundations NZ
  • St. John's College, University of Sydney
  • Austcor
  • Football Federation Australia
  • Webb Australia Group
  • Lifeline Canberra
  • Cerebral Palsy Alliance
  • Unilever
  • Fairfax Events
  • National Portrait Gallery
  • Learning Links
  • Create Foundation
  • Rockend
  • Events ACT
  • Invest Canberra
  • ACT Tourism
  • Queensland Department Education, Training & Employment
  • St. Vincent's Curran Foundation
  • Northern Stevedoring Services
  • Royal Botanic Gardens
  • Centennial Parklands
  • Assa Abloy
  • Taronga Conservation Society
  • National Gallery of Australia
  • Diversified Communications
  • Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
  • Cancer Council Qld
  • Sports Dieticians Australia
  • McGrath Foundation
  • Screen Producers Australia
  • Blacktown City Council
  • Hawkesbury & Penrith Respite Services
  • Priava (Australia and UK)
  • Elderton Homes
  • The Parks Community Network
  • Ipswich Council
  • Podiatry Association
  • Palliative Care Victoria
  • Outback NSW Tourism
  • Optical Distributors & Manufacturers Association (ODMA)
  • Australian Museum
  • Steel Reinforcement Institute of Australia (SRIA)
  • National Museum of Australia

It’s this combination of facilitation and business experience which means that Richard knows the right questions to ask and why these leading organisations ask him back to facilitate their strategy sessions year after year.

I have used Richard for facilitation of annual business planning, strategic fundraising and commercial development workshops at Taronga Zoo, National Gallery of Australia and now St Vincent’s Curran Foundation over a 14 year period. I have found him to always be extremely professional, outcome focused and helps greatly in structuring planning sessions to engage all team members in the development of mutual goals and objectives, identify issues and develop solutions.

Shanthini Naidoo, CEO, St.Vincent's Curran Foundation

Richard was MC and workshop facilitator at our Staff Development Day in 2017. The day was a great success - it was the first time we had invested in an external facilitator for the day and we have not looked back since. Richard is an entertaining and engaging facilitator who competently guided our diverse team through a series of workshops on excellence in customer service and communication, generating much valuable input for further work and reflection. I highly recommend Richard to anyone looking for a great MC and facilitator to engage their team on such topics and help build a performance culture

Birgitte Maibom, CEO Learning Links 

Richard is an excellent facilitator. He has very successfully led our corporate partnership workshops for a number of years, and most recently he facilitated a strategic planning day with our Leadership Team. He kept the day moving, kept us on track for time, ensured that all participants had multiple opportunities to contribute to the discussion. All the aims of the day were achieved in a positive, efficient and engaging manner – we will definitely keep using him for future sessions.

Richard Drysdale, Director, Finance & Corporate Services, Museum of Contemporary Art

Richard ran three sessions at our national conference in October 2018: on developing local partnerships, articulating our elevator pitch to attract supporters and facilitated a strategy session with our partners and Board. The sessions received excellent feedback and were relevant and on topic to our members. The Board strategy session to follow helped us to focus on outcomes and our goals, leaving us with key focus areas to work on. Richard is an excellent facilitator, was easy to work with and knew what we were wanting to achieve.

Eleanor Cater, Executive Officer, Community Foundations of New Zealand

Richard has made a significant contribution to helping Rockend put together its strategic plans since 2015. Facilitation of our quarterly strategic review has helped constructively direct our Leader Team to build robust strategies that allow our business to keep moving forward. Rockend is pleased to be able to recommend Richard Woodward and the services he provides.

Alister Maple Brown, CEO, Rockend

Richard offered a cohesive and strategic solution to facilitate the exchange and discussion of ideas and challenges within our business. We now run workshops for our offices in Australia and UK each year that provide invaluable insight required for management to retain staff, plan solutions to problems, and exchange new ideas for the future.

James Pegum, CEO Priava

The process of working with Richard

 

Prior to the strategic planning session

As your planning day facilitator, Richard discusses your desired outcomes in order to custom design a robust session plan that outlines the key questions to be addressed, timeframes, and the methodology for gathering information. Once agreed, this will be turned into an agenda for your strategic planning session.

During the strategic planning session

As a strategic planning facilitator, Richard helps clients to understand where they are now, where they want to go and how they are going to get there. Typical questions include:

What is our mission?

What is our vision?

What are our values?

What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats?

What are our goals?

What are our strategies to achieve these goals?

What actions are we going to take?

Who will be responsible for what actions and over what timeframe?

What are our KPIs to measure progress and success?

Reflection helps to ensure that your strategic plan capitalises on the invaluable experience of your team while minimising the likelihood of past mistakes being repeated. While reviewing progress in implementing strategic plans, Richard poses typical questions such as:

What’s currently working well that we need to do more of?

What’s not working well that we need to address?

What do we need to start doing that we’re currently not doing?

What are the barriers to achieving our goals? 

How can we address those barriers (at an individual, team and organisational level)?

Ultimately, effective facilitation creates the ideal conditions for insights to ripen and reveal themselves. Richard’s strategic planning facilitation involves led questioning and conversations, robust discussions to explore meaningful points, drawing out opinions, and encouraging participation. He guides the group towards the desired outcomes, summarising the key points at regular intervals while building consensus.

Participants leave with clarity and enduring inspiration, clear on where they are headed, why and – perhaps most importantly – equipped with concrete knowledge of how they are going to get there, with personal accountability, check-ins and timelines.

After the strategic planning session

Richard will debrief the workshop facilitation, discuss results and gain agreement as to the next steps.

I have worked with Richard over the past 3 years through sales and business development workshops and facilitating advisory panels with key industry leaders for our events. Richard is an outstanding facilitator and has structured our panels in order to develop growth opportunities through a clear vision and strategy. Richard provides the right environment to foster open discussions with our business stakeholders that has in turn, delivered us excellent insights and results.

Lauren Ebbeck, Group Exhibition Director Diversified Exhibitions

Richard's facilitation simplified the strategic planning process, whilst making it inclusive, interesting and informative. Everyone was included in the discussion as Richard created an environment where everyone's opinions were encouraged.

Tairyn Vergara, The Parks Community Network, Sydney

Richard, thank you for the time and effort you put into facilitating the past two days. It was very informative and creative. Looking forward to seeing our results from the work. You were able to get very deep comments and responses.

Russell Chatfield, National Electrical & Communications Association (NECA) Victoria

Common questions

 

Where does Richard facilitate strategic planning workshops?

Richard is able to facilitate strategic planning workshops anywhere in the world and regularly facilitates these across Australia, as well as the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

How long do these strategic planning workshops take?

This very much depends on what the organization needs. Strategic planning workshops range from just half a day to three days and occasionally longer.

What type of workshops does Richard facilitate? 

Richard facilitates strategic planning workshops, team planning days, leadership team and board workshops, all staff days, advisory panels as well as corporate partner workshops.

Who should attend these planning days?

Bringing your team’s talents together will make the collective outcome far much better as strategic planning helps to cross-pollinate ideas and taps into expertise and experience not previously examined. All organisations have value and expertise in their teams that they’re not accessing. The more people within your organisation you can involve in strategic planning, the better the outcome is likely to be.

Will Richard write up the notes after a strategic planning workshop?

Some clients solicit Richard to write up the outcomes following a strategic planning workshop while other clients prefer to write these up themselves.

How will we get started? 

Fill in and submit the form below with your facilitation requirements and Richard will contact you to start the ball rolling. Alternatively, give Richard a call on 0414 886 018. If he is unavailable, please leave your contact details and he will call you back as soon as possible.

Find out why leading organisations request Richard’s strategic planning facilitation year after year

Inquire now about Richard’s availability at your next strategic planning day. Call Richard on 0414 886 018 or fill out the form below.

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About Me

Richard is a business development strategist, trainer, speaker and author who has worked with leading organisations since 2004 to help them attract and retain new business.

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Contact Me

Richard Woodward
& Associates Pty Ltd
PO Box 908
Bondi Junction 1355
Sydney, Australia

Phone: + 61 2 8964 4350
Mobile/cell: 0414 886 018

Email: richard@richardwoodward.com.au

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