Case Study

SGCH

SGCH is a registered Community Housing Provider, developing and managing sustainable, safe and affordable homes for around 11,000 people in Sydney.

After experiencing significant growth, the SGCH Board recognised the need to transform the business to meet increasing demand and deliver affordable housing to those in need.

“In 2019, we had just come to the end of a three-year strategic planning cycle and the Board wanted a refresh and a recast. I was looking for an end-to-end partner to help deliver that,” says SGCH CEO, Scott Langford.

As a trusted affiliate of PowerHousing Australia – the peak body for the leading not-for-profit Community Housing Providers – Three Chairs Consulting was a natural choice to partner on this process and help SGCH move closer to their vision of ‘great places for everyone’.

Support provided by Three Chairs Consulting

Three Chairs has partnered with SGCH over multiple years, building strong relationships from the Board to the frontline and supporting them from the initial five-year strategy development through to implementation.

This includes strategy formulation, an updated operating model, alignment of the organisational culture to deliver on the strategy, and the co-design of a new organisation structure with the executive team to support the transformation objectives. Three Chairs also provided SGCH leaders with coaching to enhance their development and assist the execution of the change. 

“The team at Three Chairs are incredibly responsive, and they’ve got the head, the heart and the hands covered depending on what element is needed – the strategy, the people, or the implementation,” says Scott.

“What I’ve appreciated about working with them is whilst our primary engagement had been with Melanie Bois, she brought in others as needed. I’ve found them to be really clear in their advice and good experts.”

Outcomes

Working with Three Chairs Consulting from 2019–2021 has enabled SGCH to:

  • deliver a five-year strategic plan encompassing purpose, values, behaviours and strategic enablers
  • successfully roll out a new organisation structure supported by change and communication processes
  • build its leadership capabilities
  • identify several process, execution and system issues to improve efficient service delivery.

“The board was very happy with the strategy process in 2019, and it gave us a solid landing and basis upon which to operate over the following five years,” says Scott. “We then had a really good organisational review process.”

“We have now implemented a range of changes – the structural changes of which are the most visible part of our current transformation strategy.”

“The process of Three Chairs delivering the strategy also helped to strengthen our own process for how we do strategy and business planning. That helped us to identify some shifts we wanted to make in terms of our emphasis on culture and our process focus.”

“The different strengths Three Chairs have across different domains of their team – and the fact that the unifying feature is that everyone I’ve met there is a genuinely nice person – make me pretty comfortable that they’re our go-to for a number of engagements now.”