Business Planning
Change is done by people, not to people
These tools and resources are designed to support a conversation within your organisation – your leadership team, whole staff team, board team – that will draw out learning and insight to shape and develop your business plan in times of change.
We know that change is done by people, not to people, so we believe these tools are most useful when you engage with your teams and stakeholders to ensure that you have a collective understanding of where you need to go, and how you’re going to get there.
How to guide
We have complied this short ‘how to guide’ to support you in navigating and getting the most out of this suite of tools
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Exercises and Tasks
A suite of tools to explore to support your business planning

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Workshop Videos
A range of videos to watch on the theme of business planning
How to create a business plan for our times Richard Watts
Change Management Richard Watts
Reshaping our working practice Richard Watts, Michele Taylor, Hannah Corneck, Jeanie Scott, Becky Chapman
Specialists on Change Management

Karenjeet Kaur Bains
Business Planning and Finance
Karenjeet Kaur Bains
Business Planning and Finance
I am hugely passionate about inspiring and motivating people to excel with both their professional and personal ambitions and goals. This is why I love motivational and guest speaking be it face to face or engaging with an audience on a virtual level. I thoroughly enjoy being able to draw upon my own knowledge from both a professional standpoint as an ACA Chartered Accountant with 6 years’ experience at KPMG, and as a sportswoman as a Great Britain Powerlifter who is the reigning Commonwealth Champion and the First British Sikh Female to represent Great Britain at the World and European Championships placing in the Top 10. I embrace the chance to be able to work with individuals, teams and organisations to help transform their ways of working, truly understand the importance of having a healthy work life balance, and to be able to ignite a spark of hope to encourage the pursuit of your dreams.
I thoroughly love working with clients that take the time to invest in their employees and are keen to ensure both the physical and mental wellbeing of their staff. I have learnt from working in an intense corporate environment the importance of having a healthy work life balance, and certain practices I have adopted myself centre around knowledge I would love to share. I am especially keen to work with organisations that are enthusiastic towards promoting female empowerment, as well as those championing individuals from diverse and minority backgrounds to excel in the world of work being a young, female, South Asian myself. I am extremely passionate about working with clients that value education and helping the next generation, being an individual who came from humble beginnings as a state-school student who rose up the ranks through sheer hard work and determination. I have grown up with core values of both education and sport instilled into me whereby working with schools and universities as a positive role model is a cause I hold dear to my heart.
I have seasoned experience working at KPMG for 6 years working my way up to Assistant Manager level. I have demonstrated success of delivering high profile audits within set time frames and budgets for industry leaders in Telecommunications, Engineering, Advertising, and Business Process Outsourcing. I was the Senior Auditor in charge of a portfolio of clients including the UK and South Africa Division for NTT (the 4th largest telecommunications company in the world with operating revenue of $111.18 billion). As well as accumulated significant technical knowledge and end to end audit delivery for clients such as Virgin Atlantic, Capita, BBDO, ITV and Channel 4. During my time at KPMG, I was nominated as one of the Faces of KPMG and was a leading face for the 150th Anniversary Campaign that was presented to Her Majesty the Queen. I also refined my talent as a motivational speaker for the KPMG Sikh Network, where I gave speeches to business leaders and founders of charitable organisations such as Khalsa Aid due to my sporting and professional achievements.
I am currently an ambassador for charities including the Sikh Games and the Sikh Assembly. I have been featured in two of Malala Fund’s campaigns as one of the Faces of the 2020 Game Changers series, as well as a contributing author as one of 25 girls in Malala’s upcoming anthology due to be published by HarperCollins India in April 2022. I am keen to inspire the next generation through my work, and have seized opportunities including being an upcoming Children’s Book Narrator for IM1313 aiming to bring the message of Sikhism universally with the ambition of becoming one of the mainstream children’s books. I am a strong advocate for gender equality between males and females; being one of the leading Faces of the VatikaUK Campaign promoting the importance of strong female role models such as Sportswomen.
I would love to work on projects which are keen to explore innovative, out of the box approaches to thriving in the workplace. Any organisations that are eager to invest in their employees physical, and mental wellbeing who would be interested in learning more about my approach towards life coaching in a professional sphere, but also learning about my mindset as an athlete. I would be very excited to work with organisations who are geared towards breaking barriers, societal stigmas, and are advocates of female empowerment. At the same time I enjoy giving back to the community, as a Sikh I believe in the act of “Seva” which is selfless service so would thrive working with charitable organisations, as well as being a role model to young people giving motivational talks at colleges, schools and universities. I believe I am a dynamic, multi-faceted individual who would be adaptable and be able to mould into various campaigns championing change i.e. the Black Lives Matter movement being a woman of colour myself.
I received some excellent feedback on my first engagement with People make it work having being invited as a motivational speaker whom is also an Athlete for the Coventry City of Culture Event. It was truly heartwarming to hear from Richard himself that I had a brilliant impact during this virtual conference, where the difference could be seen in people’s face to what I had to say. He mentioned how I had made a difference to so many people that day attending the call by sharing my story, whilst also being myself in such a powerful way. The lovely Zara Rush also reached out to me commending me on my performance stating that my contribution to the event was incredible, and that I was a true inspiration whom the City of Culture staff loved hearing from! These were some of the most incredible comments I had received throughout my professional career and was one of the reasons I have jumped at the chance to freelance and collaborate with such an amazing organization!
My specialist areas include public speaking/virtual conferences drawing upon my experience as both an elite athlete as the reigning Commonwealth Powerlifting Champion and the First British Sikh Female to represent Great Britain in Powerlifting; and my professional experience as a qualified ACA Chartered Accountant with 6 years experience at a Big 4 Accounting Firm. I have an ability to run successful workshops drawing upon my approach towards hard work, discipline and determination in both my sporting and professional career available for schools, universities and the corporate world. I am also able to offer tailored guest speaking providing an insight into what my competitive experience has been like as an elite athlete juggling a demanding professional career; including PowerPoint presentations showcasing videos of my performance representing Great Britain specific to each event.
As well as that key skill sets I have include project management of both an onshore and offshore team, ability to work under pressured situations whilst remaining calm and composed, strong interpersonal and communication skills, the ability to work proactively and effectively in a team, leadership skills, time management as well as a professional demeanour when communicating with clients building strong rapport for long lasting fulfilling relationships. Professionally I am a qualified ACA Chartered Accountant with significant experience working with a range of small and large organisations in the Consumer and Leisure sector. I would also be able to draw upon this knowledge to provide professional input to clients from a financial standpoint.

James Doeser
Consultant & Researcher
James Doeser
Consultant & Researcher
Hello there, I love breaking taboos and overturning convention. Research is a tool for radicals who take life seriously. I am at my best with leaders who have an appetite for risk and change. I’ve worked with individual artists, local cultural organisations and national funders. I used to be a researcher at Arts Council England. I’m always on the lookout for projects with an international dimension – learning from other countries or sharing experiences across borders. Clients find me invigorating and upbeat – challenging their assumptions and widening their horizons. My expertise are in research: asking the right questions, finding the best evidence, and interpreting data in ways that are intelligible and applicable in everyday practice.

Dan de la Motte
Project Enabler
Dan de la Motte
Project Enabler
Hello there, I love embedding accessibility, community and inclusion into artistic and cultural projects. Finding links and building unlikely alliances amongst audiences, artists, venues, communities and all stakeholders. I enjoy working with clients that have a sense of play, joy and mischief in the work that they want to make and do and an openness and willing for collaboration over competition. I love it with there is an understanding that our work with audiences and communities should be a relationship, not a transaction. I have worked with Alexandra Palace, Alleyne&, Arcola Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Equity, Fevered Sleep, Jonny Woo/The Glory, London Theatre Consortium, Museum of London & Museum of London Docklands, Queer Tours of London, Repowering London, St Margaret’s House, Unity Arts, Watermill Theatre, What Next? and Young Vic Theatre. As I look the future I aspire to make long-lasting and meaningful connections between audiences, communities and organizations. Placing a sense of play and joy at the heart of projects and offering insight into how to make this thrive. “Dan has the ability to empower those around him to express themselves, whilst also making the experience itself enjoyable.” – Megan Cronin, Director, Carnation for a Song, Young Vic

Dan de la Motte
Consultant
Dan de la Motte
Consultant
Hello there, I love embedding accessibility, community and inclusion into artistic and cultural projects. Finding links and building unlikely alliances amongst audiences, artists, venues, communities and all stakeholders. I enjoy working with clients that have a sense of play, joy and mischief in the work that they want to make and do and an openness and willing for collaboration over competition. I love it with there is an understanding that our work with audiences and communities should be a relationship, not a transaction. I have worked with Alexandra Palace, Alleyne&, Arcola Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Equity, Fevered Sleep, Jonny Woo/The Glory, London Theatre Consortium, Museum of London & Museum of London Docklands, Queer Tours of London, Repowering London, St Margaret’s House, Unity Arts, Watermill Theatre, What Next? and Young Vic Theatre. As I look the future I aspire to make long-lasting and meaningful connections between audiences, communities and organizations. Placing a sense of play and joy at the heart of projects and offering insight into how to make this thrive. “Dan has the ability to empower those around him to express themselves, whilst also making the experience itself enjoyable.” – Megan Cronin, Director, Carnation for a Song, Young Vic

Zara Rush
Developing Holistic Programmes
Zara Rush
Developing Holistic Programmes
Zara has spent the last 11 years producing a wide variety of UK based cultural projects. She started out at Sadler’s Wells working in the community and engagement team connecting local and national communities with the theatres exceptional artists and resources and project managing large scale community productions and festivals. She went on to work with Corali, a learning disabled dance company, to develop new performance work and secure a national tour. Simultaneously Zara was creative producer for MOVE IT 2018, Europe's largest dance expo at Excel Centre, overseeing the creative programme and infrastructure for the event which saw 30,000 people enjoy the show. Recently her work has seen a shift into the wider cultural sector working across museums, heritage, libraries, performing and visual arts. In 2019 she produced a series of conferences for Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on the Civic Role of Arts Organisations which developed an in-depth enquiry into what cultural spaces represent for communities. Most recently she is working for people make it work producing leadership and change programmes. During summer 2020 she produced CULTURE RESET a rapid response programme for 192 producers in the UK to reimagine the future of arts and culture and address the topic of relevance in their work and organisations. Zara is also a yoga coach and approaches all her work with a deeply invested interest in what it is to be human and to lead with compassion and equanimity.