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Ep 1. Gemma Peters, CEO Blood Cancer UK (Part 1): Leading through the pandemic - Impact on cancer communities and the charity sector
114 Plays4 years ago
“We do really need the government to acknowledge that this (research) investment is critical. It’s critical to patients, but it’s also critical to the UK as an entity. The UK’s strength in medical research is something that we are all so proud of.”
In this very first episode of The Charity CEO Podcast we speak with Gemma Peters, CEO of Blood Cancer UK. In Part 1 of our conversation, we talk about leading through the current crisis; the impact of delayed healthcare and medical research for cancer patients; discuss the tough decisions behind redundancy consultations at Blood Cancer UK; collaboration in the charity sector; and even outline a proposal for setting up a Charity Mergers and Partnerships hub!
Gemma reflects on what she has learnt as a leader and on decision making with imperfect data. She also shares how being open and vulnerable has actually helped bring her closer to her team and made them collectively more effective.
Episode recorded August 2020 via Skype.
Visit www.thecharityceo.com for full show details.
Gemma Peters joined Blood Cancer UK as Chief Executive in September 2017. Prior to this she worked at King’s College London and King’s Health Partners as Executive Director of Fundraising and Supporter Development. Gemma also spent 7 years as Trustee for Action Aid UK.
www.bloodcancer.org.uk
In this very first episode of The Charity CEO Podcast we speak with Gemma Peters, CEO of Blood Cancer UK. In Part 1 of our conversation, we talk about leading through the current crisis; the impact of delayed healthcare and medical research for cancer patients; discuss the tough decisions behind redundancy consultations at Blood Cancer UK; collaboration in the charity sector; and even outline a proposal for setting up a Charity Mergers and Partnerships hub!
Gemma reflects on what she has learnt as a leader and on decision making with imperfect data. She also shares how being open and vulnerable has actually helped bring her closer to her team and made them collectively more effective.
Episode recorded August 2020 via Skype.
Visit www.thecharityceo.com for full show details.
Gemma Peters joined Blood Cancer UK as Chief Executive in September 2017. Prior to this she worked at King’s College London and King’s Health Partners as Executive Director of Fundraising and Supporter Development. Gemma also spent 7 years as Trustee for Action Aid UK.
www.bloodcancer.org.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to The Charity CEO Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders, with candid, meaningful conversations that really get beneath the surface of issues. This show aims to inspire, inform and deliver practical insights on the challenges facing charity leaders today, for the benefit of leaders across the sector and for those who care about the important work of charities.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm your host, Divya O'Connor, and each episode I will be interviewing a charity chief executive who will share with us their insights, knowledge and expert opinion on a particular topic or area of expertise.
Gemma Peters on Leadership in Crisis
00:00:44
Speaker
I am delighted that my very first guest on the podcast is the lovely Gemma Peters, CEO of Blood Cancer UK. Gemma and I worked closely together when I was chief executive of Children and Cancer UK and were founding members of the Children and Young People's Cancer Coalition. So we certainly know a thing or two about cancer.
00:01:02
Speaker
In this episode, part one of our conversation, we talk about leading through the current crisis and the impact of delayed health care and medical research for cancer patients. We discuss the tough decisions behind redundancy consultations at Blood Cancer UK, touch upon collaboration in the charity sector and even outline a proposal for setting up a charity mergers and acquisitions hub.
00:01:24
Speaker
Gemma reflects on what she has learned as a leader and on decision making with imperfect data. She also shares how being open and vulnerable during this time has actually helped bring her closer to her team and made them collectively more effective. I hope you enjoy the show.
00:01:41
Speaker
Hi, Gemma. Welcome to the show. Hi, Divya. It's very exciting to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes. I just wanted to say before we get started that I'm absolutely thrilled to have you on as my very first guest on the very first episode of the Charity CEO podcast. So thank you so much for being here.
00:02:00
Speaker
No, it's a pleasure. I'm very excited too. A lot to live up to if I'm the first one. I'm sure you're going to be brilliant.
Icebreaker and Personal Stories
00:02:07
Speaker
So the structure of the show is that we kick off with an ice break around, which is just 60 seconds of some lighthearted personal questions. The intention of which is for our listeners to get to know you a little bit and for us to have a little bit of fun. So Gemma, are you ready?
00:02:24
Speaker
I think so. Excellent. I'm just going to set our 60 second timer here and we can get started. What was your first job? Working in an Italian suit up in the town where I grew up and it was, I think, a hundred percent commission based.
00:02:48
Speaker
but it turned out I was quite good at it. So, yeah, I don't feel like I liked it. Although actually, do you need to count the fact that I made the cricket tees before that? Cause I think I did get paid for that. So really I would say cricket tees followed by a shoe shop. Okay. So as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A news reporter or a hairdresser. Wow. I think this is going to lend to the next question. If you were a Spice Girl, which one would you be and why?
00:03:18
Speaker
Oh, that's such a good question. I mean, I think that I would like to be Scary Spice. I'm not sure how scary I really am. I'm not sure if I get to do that. I'm definitely not sporty or baby. I don't think I'm very posh. Who else is left of here? Have I missed one? Well, that's the timer. I think Ginger Spice is the last one. Oh, yeah, with the Union Jack dress. Yeah, you know, maybe.
00:03:49
Speaker
Okay. So which one did you go for then? Cause you went through all five of them. Oh, I see. I think, I think scary. Okay. Excellent. Uh, so yeah, that is the end of the icebreaker round. Although there is a bonus question that I am going to ask you. If you could interview anybody in the world dead or alive and you had one question to ask them, what one question would you like to ask them?
00:04:16
Speaker
Oh my goodness, Davia, there are so many people that I would like to, and dead or alive, that's like unlimited. So I think there are lots of women in history whose voices we haven't heard, who we don't understand because they just weren't written about in the same way. So I think I would think about someone who
00:04:40
Speaker
other people have written their story and they haven't had a chance to tell it themselves, I think. So I'm quite interested in people who were in, for instance, in court.
00:04:51
Speaker
like in Henry Dade's courts, the women in those places who actually were a massive part of court life, but their stories very, very rarely get told. So I think I would dig around. I might have to come back to you with a name, but I'd dig around and find someone who was at important moments in our history, a woman at important moments in our history who we just have no record of and haven't heard anything from.
00:05:12
Speaker
Wow, I love that, that's great.
Blood Cancer UK's Achievements and Mission
00:05:16
Speaker
So before we get stuck into our main discussion, I wanted to wish you congratulations because I see that the Charity Times award nominations are out for 2020 and that Blood Cancer UK has received a whole host of nominations. I know, it's nice isn't it, it's nice timing actually, bit of a boost when things are difficult.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly what I thought. You've been nominated for Large Charity of the Year, you personally for Charity Leader of the Year, well done, and the nominations for your fundraising team, your change team. So yes, that must be great. I'm really pleased with the team, actually. We've been on a, as you know, we've been on a big old journey in those last few years and pre-coronavirus, it really felt like we were in an excellent place and I'm glad that
00:06:05
Speaker
I'm really pleased for the teams. They've worked so hard that even in the nomination, whatever happens, I haven't properly looked at the shortlist yet, but I'm sure there are other brilliant organisations nominated too. But just even to be on the shortlist is a real boost for everyone. So I'm really pleased. Well done. So on that note, tell us more about Blood Cancer UK and what you guys do. So Blood Cancer UK has been around for 60 years. We're set up in 1960.
00:06:32
Speaker
And we're a charity that works in blood cancer, so our mission is to beat blood cancer, that is leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma. There are 130-ish types of blood cancer, so there are lots to remember, but they're the three main groups.
00:06:47
Speaker
And we fund research into those cancers and we support people who are affected by those cancers. And we campaign for change on their behalf as well. So we've sort of got three elements to our mission. And as I know you know, Divya, it's the third biggest cancer killer in the country. So it's a really important cancer to make progress because it affects 250,000 people.
00:07:12
Speaker
And it's the most common cancer in children and young people too. So we have a big focus on that in our work as well. But we've been around for a long time, like lots of charities were set up by a family who really sadly lost their little girl to leukemia. And they at the time didn't understand why she got leukemia or what the treatment options were. And they decided that wasn't good enough. So they set up the
00:07:34
Speaker
first ever Leukemia Research Laboratory, which was at Great Ormond Street. And they essentially just connected with all these other families who were going through similar things around the country, who set up different groups to raise money. So when we were founded with the Leukemia Research Fund, and today we're blood cancer UK, but with the same mission that the Eastwood family started us off with. And in fact, Sylvia Gaunt, who's the daughter of the parents, who sets us off, Susan's sister,
00:08:04
Speaker
is still really involved in the charity today. So that's, I was talking to her last week and she says to me, she says, come on Gemma, we've got to do this while I'm still alive. So crack on. So she's very involved. Like we've got, so I haven't got, you know, we'll hope they have got a long time because hopefully Sylvia will be with us a long time. But I definitely feel that sense of, come on, we've got to, we've got to beat this. And we've made a lot of progress, but there's a way to go.
Impact of COVID-19 on Cancer Care and Research
00:08:30
Speaker
Yes, the pressure is on and not helped of course by COVID-19 and the pandemic and indeed the impact on cancer patients. So NHS England released some statistics recently that showed a 60% reduction in urgent cancer referrals due to the disruption
00:08:51
Speaker
And I know Cancer Research UK is estimating that there are over 2 million people in the UK who are awaiting cancer screening tests and treatment now. Obviously, that is across all types of cancers. But what does all of this mean for blood cancer patients? It doesn't add up to a very happy picture for lots of reasons. So before COVID-19, we'd set an ambition to say we thought we could beat blood cancer, i.e. no one would die of it.
00:09:21
Speaker
within 30 years. And that was based on scientific progress that was being made in new treatments and our understanding of the disease and how it interacts with individual people's genetics. And I think what's happened in COVID-19 is a number of things. First of all, the science has been really disrupted. So ongoing scientists have ended up going, if they were clinical, back to the NHS, loaning equipment out to work.
00:09:50
Speaker
to do diagnosis expertise has been off working on COVID-19 and moved off cancer. So labs have really slowed to a halt pretty much. So that is obviously having a big impact and these things aren't quick to pick up. So it's not that when people start going back to the laboratory, the research will just pick up and it'll be back on a timeline. It'll take people a while to build back up all the things that they had and not least the people. So I think that's one element where you can say that it's having a massive impact on
00:10:21
Speaker
cancer patients and their access to new treatments or the likelihood of new treatments coming. There's then the element of clinical trials. I mean, new recruitment on clinical trials stopped in March and it's being very slow to get that going. So if you're a cancer patient and your best hope is a trial, it's not a good time. There aren't many trials available and we're working with others really hard to try and get those back open and running, but it's incredibly difficult with the pressure that the NHS is under.
00:10:49
Speaker
And then rightly, you talked about there what's happened to delays in diagnosis. So screening isn't an issue really for blood cancer patients because we don't have blood cancer screening at the moment. Although one of my hopes is that we will be able to develop that, but we don't have it at the moment. But what's happening is it was already one of the slowest to diagnose cancers.
00:11:10
Speaker
Lots of the messaging that's been put out for understandable reason about protect the NHS, stay away from hospital if you can, stay away from your GP if you can has meant that lots and lots of people who otherwise we're estimating probably about 100,000 people who otherwise would have been diagnosed have not been diagnosed. And we know that cancer hasn't stopped. So they're out there, those people are out there, they're just not diagnosed and not being diagnosed early is a massive problem.
00:11:39
Speaker
And then the other element is about people who have been diagnosed whose treatment has changed and have, you know, it's not all bad. In some cases, people's treatment, they would say has changed for the better because we've got much better at delivering treatment at home. So some advances that perhaps the NHS should have made earlier.
00:11:59
Speaker
have really been fast forwarded in this time, whether that's about treatments that require less stay in hospital or things that can be delivered at home or consultations that can happen virtually or blood tests that can happen locally. Patients would say some of that has been positive, but equally, the harrowing stories that we're hearing about people who've had appointments cancelled and scans cancelled, who when they've had them later, the disease has progressed so much that their likelihood of survival
00:12:29
Speaker
is much smaller than it would have been if it had been picked up earlier. So as painful as it is to say, I think we'll see more deaths indirectly as a result of COVID through things like cancer diagnosis being delayed and treatments being changed than we will from COVID itself. And that isn't even taking into account the fact that blood cancer patients, particularly, are much more likely to die of COVID than anyone else.
00:12:58
Speaker
If you have blood cancer and you contract COVID, you end up in hospital, but only 50% of that group survive. So it's an incredibly anxious worrying time for the blood cancer community and for all of us who work to support that community. I mean, I think I can pretty confidently say there hasn't been a worse time. And so the pressures on us as an organization
00:13:26
Speaker
do the very best we can are huge.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yes, I know there was a recent government report that estimated we are going to see over 200,000 deaths due to delayed healthcare and who knows the number could actually be a lot higher than that. You talked there about your blood cancer community and people who are obviously shielding or need to shield because they're more vulnerable to COVID-19. Tell us a bit about your Save the Shielders campaign. What's been its impact?
00:14:00
Speaker
So there are 250,000 people with blood cancer in the UK and 200,000 of them were asked to shield, so they were in the extremely vulnerable group. So the vast majority of people with blood cancer are shielding. And obviously that means that they and their families are shielding. And shielding, people know I expect, but is a really strict, it's different to social distancing. It's a very strict set of conditions about staying inside and isolating yourself even from your family in your home. And
00:14:28
Speaker
So people have been doing that as a huge impact on people's mental health, but we've been supporting people in that. And then we had an announcement a few weeks ago that said shielding was going to end on the 31st of July for everyone. And this caused a great deal of concern in our community because what it meant really was that the support for people shielding was going to
00:14:56
Speaker
change and be reduced. And already that group were struggling. So for instance, they were getting food parcels, they're getting medicine deliveries. They were able to be signed off by their employer either on furlough or with sick pay. It was kind of categorised as so people were being given financial support. And that although there were problems accessing some of that, that really was helping people.
00:15:22
Speaker
And the big concern now it's stopped has been people who we hear from a lot who were at pressure to go back to work. So if you imagine the situation of you or someone you love is perhaps has had an acute leukaemia, maybe has survived that. So you feared losing that person once you faced into that and they've survived. And then this threat of coronavirus comes and you're worried again. And so you shield and you protect them. And then.
00:15:50
Speaker
you're told that you can no longer shield and you and your family have to go back to work or face the financial consequences of not working. If you work in an environment that isn't COVID safe, that's an impossible decision. I can't even imagine to know what I would do in that situation, but it would be absolutely agonizing. And I feel sometimes in the communication that we've had about this,
00:16:13
Speaker
Everyone imagines that people have jobs like mine where you can work from home really easily. Well, most people don't have office jobs. People who I spoke to who are driving in structures, nurses, people who work in care homes, people who go in and if you've got a rat problem, one of the people I spoke to who does pest control goes into people's homes for his job, that's his job. That can't ever be COVID safe and he can't get sick pay.
00:16:41
Speaker
And he can't go back to work without being scared. And he wasn't furloughed and he can't now be added to the furlough scheme. So we've left this relatively small group, working age people whose jobs can't be made COVID secure who have blood cancer in an incredibly vulnerable and difficult position. And that's just not fair and it's not right. And so the Save Our Shield Us campaign has been about drawing attention to that group and asking for support.
00:17:10
Speaker
And it's picking up quite a lot of momentum. We've had a lot of good media support, but also support in parliament. In fact, I've got a conversation later today about it. So I'm hopeful that we might be able to get something put in place to protect that group, but they were just forgotten about, I think, or at least they were not top of mind when everyone wanted the message to be, get back to work, you know, super Saturday, remember the pubs are open, the beaches are open, come on everyone, we've got to get back to normal. That might be true for lots of us, but it isn't true for that group.
00:17:41
Speaker
And we've had lots of clinicians, doctors, nurses, GPs saying they wouldn't advise their individual patients to go back to work. So then you're in a position where your clinical team are telling you not to go to work. Your employer, probably not unreasonably, is saying, well, either you have to come to work or I have to get someone else to do your job, so I can't afford to pay you anymore. What do you do?
00:18:05
Speaker
If we come back to the science for a moment, coming from a medical research charity myself, I know that reducing research spend today has real consequences on the development and discovery of new drugs and new treatments going forward maybe five, 10 years or even beyond that.
00:18:26
Speaker
The Association of Medical Research Charities, the MRC, is projecting a reduction of $310 million in medical research investment in just the next 12 months. I know at Blood Cancer UK you recently announced that you're looking at potentially a $1.8 million reduction in research spend this year.
00:18:47
Speaker
Can you tell us more about how you see this playing out over the next few years? And I'm really interested to know if you're able to do anything to protect some of the key research and projects that you know are in the pipeline. Yeah. So you're right. It is a pretty devastating picture. So, you know, it's not just my organization that's faced with the really difficult prospects of dramatically reducing our research bend.
00:19:15
Speaker
but so is every other medical research charity in the country. And I think maybe people haven't really known how much of our medical research in this country is funded by charities. It's huge. And unfortunately, the way they're going to find out, it looks like, is because so much of it is going to stop. So I think we're part of the AMRC, the Association of Medical Research Charities campaign, to really encourage the government to step in
00:19:42
Speaker
and to perhaps match funding that charities are putting into universities to keep some of that research alive or to keep more of it alive. I think we've certainly taken a view, and I think other charities have too, that our existing research commitments which span out over three or five years, depending on what the project is, we will absolutely honour and that research will continue.
00:20:05
Speaker
And then how much more we're able to start in terms of new funding will entirely be based on how quickly we can build up our fundraising, essentially. How can we build up our money so that we can invest and research will always be a priority for us because it always has been. So we're in a strong enough position that this year we can still make new awards. And my expectation is we will also be able to do that next year.
00:20:32
Speaker
but the next three years will be tough and it will be far short of what I wanted it to be. So then the question for us is, how can we make sure that what we are spending has the maximum impact? And this is where I think we've got to try and, you know, to use that now overuse phase build back better. But one of the things I'm really keen on is looking across the charity sector to see at how we can align research and join up the conversations about research strategy much better.
00:21:00
Speaker
so that we have a much deeper understanding of what other charities are doing who fund research in the blood cancer space, whether that's Cancer Research UK or whether it's some of the other blood cancer charities or the other children's cancer research charities, to come to a shared view and understanding about what each other will be able to do and what we won't so that nothing really critical falls through the cracks if we can stop it and equally that we don't duplicate.
00:21:25
Speaker
and that we don't end up wasting money when money in research is going to be so critical. So we're starting, we're in the process of developing our research strategy that had started actually before COVID-19, but has continued through it. And we're engaging and have done since the beginning with all the other charity funders who work in our space and actually, and also with some who are kind of slightly more tangential, but I think could prove interesting in terms of collaboration.
00:21:54
Speaker
think collaboration will be key in research, as it will in other areas. But also we do really need the government to acknowledge that this investment is critical, that it's critical to patients, but it's also critical to the UK as a kind of entity. Like the UK strength in medical research is something that we're all so proud of. We punch so far above our weight compared to the size of country and the number of people in terms of the number of breakthroughs that come out of the UK. We've got to protect that.
00:22:24
Speaker
And if we just allow the research spend to drop off in line with donations dropping off, we'll lose something valuable to individuals and valuable to the country as a whole. So I'm hoping those conversations that are underway will result in something that will make this a bit easier. But I still think making sure we're investing every pound in the best possible way and working collaboratively with others has got to be part of the way through this.
Charity Sector Challenges and Collaboration
00:22:52
Speaker
Talking a bit more about collaboration then, I mean, you and I were talking about this earlier in terms of there've been so many great examples during the past few months through the crisis of charities collaborating across the sector with government, et cetera, but that it still feels that collaboration in the charity sector is a little slow or feels a little hard. Why do you think that is and what can leaders do to address that?
00:23:21
Speaker
So I agree with you. I think it is much lower. I've been really pleased to see that as you've spotted that this crisis has accelerated some of that. So, you know, it's been brilliant to work with other cancer charities on One Cancer Voice stuff. It's been brilliant to work with part of the Children and Young People's Cancer Coalition, the Blood Cancer Alliance, you know, increasingly working more closely together. But it is slow and it's like the needs to
00:23:46
Speaker
What is, I think it is what forces people out of their comfort zone enough to say, we're going to have to give something up, but the end result of giving something up will be better for the people that we are here to serve. And I think that there are lots of things structurally that make it quite difficult. So I think often you have charity boards. Well, the story I've just told you about a family who set us up, have charity boards who feel that sense of responsibility to keep the organization going as
00:24:14
Speaker
Their job as a trustee is to hand on the organisation to the next set of trustees in better shape than they inherited it. But inherent in that thinking is that the organisation, as it's currently configured, has to exist. Whereas actually, if you were looking at, I don't know, let's take my area because it's obviously one I know. If you looked at the needs of the 250,000 people with blood cancer, looked at the needs they had that weren't being fulfilled by the state,
00:24:45
Speaker
and said, well, the charity sector should be the third sector should fulfill those needs. What's the best way to align a set of organisations to meet those needs? You would not draw out the current situation that we have. You wouldn't draw out hundreds and hundreds of charities of varying different sizes and focus to meet those needs. Because some bits of that needs gap is met really well and other bits aren't met at all. And sometimes we're wasting money and sometimes we're collaborating well.
00:25:15
Speaker
I think that there are some emotional reasons that make those discussions harder and often they can be at board level, but also at chief exec level. And also I think there are some practical things. So I'm really interested in, most chief execs I talk to are really interested in the idea of shared services, kind of what can we do
00:25:36
Speaker
whether it's shared space or shared finance functions or HR functions or CRM systems or back office things, where there's a cost just to having those in existence that you probably, if you're a charity of our size, don't use it maximally. Can we collaborate with other charities to do that? There are things in the system that make that incredibly difficult, like the fact you have to charge fat on things if you want to run a shared service together, which suddenly mean that
00:26:06
Speaker
Actually, it's not quite as financially beneficial as you thought it was. So given that you're giving something up, not total control of that service, and then the cost gets a bit more expensive, it's quite hard to make that happen. I hope, I really hope that one of the things that comes out of this crisis is dishonesty and vulnerability that we've seen from leaders across the sector extending into honest conversations about where organizations shouldn't be doubling up, shouldn't be duplicating
00:26:36
Speaker
should be coming together, should genuinely put the needs of service users, beneficiaries, community, whatever the language is that you use front and center and ask really difficult questions. Are we doing our absolute best as a sector, not as an individual organization, but as a sector, are we doing our best? And I think the other thing I would say just from a really practical perspective is even where there's say, two chief execs meet and two boards meet and they think it's a good idea for their
00:27:06
Speaker
charities to come together. Even in those circumstances, which feels like you're really far on in the conversation, the time that it takes to work through all the things that you need to work through for those haven't a huge. So you're basically writing off your senior team with your organisation for months while you work those things through. And then it might not happen. I was reading a report the other day, so think on mergers, something I can't remember, something like only ever 2% of mergers that start being talked about ever happen.
00:27:36
Speaker
But imagine all the time that's been spent and probably everyone you'll talk to on this podcast has been in those conversations. My instinct is that most people have and most of the time they've gone into it with really good intention. It hasn't ended up anywhere. And so then in this environment, you say, can we afford for our senior team to go and have those conversations again with ex-organisation? It's quite tricky, isn't it?
00:28:04
Speaker
given so many of them fail. So I think there's definitely sector support that could be put in. You almost need like a kind of mergers and partnerships hub that can resource, organisations can come and say, we think we could work better together. Can you facilitate that for us and take some of the heavy lifting away and we will do what we need to do to make it happen. Because also, most organisations don't have the expertise for this.
00:28:33
Speaker
I think that's a great idea and I wonder if somebody will be listening to this podcast and think, oh, that's a great idea. I will set up this resource as a merger and partnerships support or expert think tank, whatever it might be for charities. I think it would be great. And you know what as well, Divya, I mean, I think it's, I think it would be funded. I think there will be philanthropic funders that would fund that. Because the number of times I talk to donors,
00:28:58
Speaker
And they support our work. They're incredibly passionate about it and probably because they're passionate about blood cancer for a personal reason. And they'll say, oh, but there are so many charities. Couldn't you do more? And I think I could probably name four or five funders now that would fund something like that. So I think it would be great. And let's hope it happens.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yes, and I think that brings us to another interesting point in terms of the case for charities in civil society. How do we make a stronger case for charities and what has the pandemic response said about us as a sector? It's really interesting, isn't it? So I think one thing I've been surprised by, to be totally honest, in this situation has been for a group of organisations,
00:29:51
Speaker
the third sector who are the best campaigners I've ever met. That's what they do. They kind of campaign, they advocate, they fight, they cajole, they get voices heard. We haven't done that very well as a sector, have we? And there's been great efforts, but somehow we haven't landed how important
00:30:13
Speaker
our sector is and what it will mean, both for the people who work for the sector, but much more importantly for the needs that won't be met if the sector reduces or bits of it collapse. We haven't managed to shift the conversation such that we're seen as a vital part of UK infrastructure, I think. And I think we've seen that in the support measures.
00:30:40
Speaker
that well, early on we were told we could take advantage of the furlough scheme just like everyone else. We could, but it really didn't help a lot of us very much. If you had a massive influx of demand, we had in the space of two weeks the whole incoming demand that we had in the whole of last year. There was so much need suddenly, a real spike in need. It didn't help me to have my team sitting at home, not doing anything, not allowed to work strictly prohibited from helping us.
00:31:11
Speaker
That just didn't work for us. And when I spoke to lots of other charities, they're in exactly the same position. They couldn't afford to furlough people, basically, and also couldn't afford not to. So I think the thinking about how you support this bit of the sector wasn't there. So I think the depth of relationships that were held in government and by decision makers and the lack of understanding there was really painful and obvious to see.
00:31:37
Speaker
And also, I think you've heard it in some of the languages people have talked about charities. I think people are, and maybe as a sector, I think we've contributed to this, this idea that charities are local, voluntary run, small, run on goodwill, all about local people helping other local people. And that is a massively important part of our sector and that lots of those organizations do a huge, huge amount, but it doesn't speak to
00:32:07
Speaker
the whole of the sector. And it certainly doesn't speak to organisations, for instance, that are funding tens of millions of pounds of medical research every year. You know, employees ask for thousands of people, you know, run meet and need, which lots of people think is being met by the state, but it's actually being met by charities. You know, perhaps hospices might be the easiest and best example of that, where a lot of hospice service is funded through charitable donations.
00:32:34
Speaker
And yet I think people think that that state funded and it's only when you start to see donations and people are faced with dropping off and people are faced with the idea of hospice is closing, that people understand that actually you got to support that sector differently. So I hope what will happen after this is that we will have a much more wide ranging, deeper conversation with some of the government departments that we've built up relationships with through the crisis about
00:33:03
Speaker
How do we support a vibrant, strong third sector that is a critical part of having a fair, thriving society? You know, it's completely the sector being strong and society being strong go hands in glove, and we need to have those conversations at that level. But also, you know, to kind of put the focus back on the sector for a minute, we need to be really clear about what we want, what we're advocating for, and we need to come together
00:33:33
Speaker
to do that. We're a very well-connected sector with great people in it, with brilliant ideas, brilliant thinking, real ability to bring about change. And I think what's happened is we've perhaps been a bit too focused on our own, a bit too, but we've been very focused down onto our own organisations. And we need to just make sure that
00:33:58
Speaker
our organisations that represent us who are doing a brilliant job like NCVO and Akivo, but they're supported. They have enough infrastructure and resource. We've put enough time into them so that the thinking is really clear and that everyone stands ready to do their bit for the sector as a whole, as well as their own bit of it.
Financial Strain and Workforce Impact
00:34:15
Speaker
Yes, I know the think tank pro bono economics is projecting a 10 billion pound shortfall in unmet demand in terms of income loss, as well as services that don't match up to demand in the next year. It's interesting, according to the UK civil society, Almanac, in 2019, the sector employed 910,000 people.
00:34:43
Speaker
Now, with this huge drop in income, I know many charities are looking at job reductions, some are potentially going to have to shut up shop altogether, and that's going to be a devastating loss for the sector in terms of the workforce. I know that recently Blood Cancer UK also announced that you are in consultation to reduce jobs and that you're possibly looking at reducing your workforce by about 27%.
00:35:11
Speaker
Tell us, how has that process been for you and your team so far? What can you share with us at this point? It has absolutely been the worst period of my working life. There's no question. It's been really devastating and agonizing and gut wrenching and difficult. The reason for that is because
00:35:41
Speaker
the organisation and the people within it are really, really doing well. And by that, I mean, we had a good strategy, we were executing it well, people were working really hard, COVID hit, they worked even harder, they refocussed overnight, we realigned priorities, they raised more, you know, they just did everything, everything that they could possibly do and pull together, you know, the kind of culture and energy the organisation had never, ever, ever been higher.
00:36:12
Speaker
And nothing that we did could offset a seven million drop in income this year. Five million next year is our anticipation. I suspect the year after that won't be very much better. I think this is a long haul problem we're through now, both because I think the virus isn't going away very quickly, but also think the economic impact of it is we haven't seen it yet. That's coming later and that's going to have a big impact on giving.
00:36:39
Speaker
So to go to the people who I've worked with for three years, who I have hired mostly because they're brilliant and driven and the best people that I would want to work alongside in building a charity like But I Can't See UK, to have to say to those people, we can't carry on at this size and we're going to have to make
00:37:05
Speaker
a number of you redundant to get really significant numbers on between a quarter and a third of our workforce is awful. And it's awful for people who are staying because there are colleagues and there are people who we wanted to carry on working with. But of course, it's going to be hardest on the people who are at risk. We're still in consultation, so we haven't made any firm decisions that will happen in September. But obviously, if your job is at risk and you know it's at risk,
00:37:35
Speaker
it is an incredibly difficult time and would be at any point, but something I feel very deeply is the environment out there isn't easy. It's not just us. In a way, as a leader, I think there's something
00:37:51
Speaker
There's something which is comforting, which is this isn't a mistake that we made. This is everyone is going through this. So in one sense, you can take some comfort in that. But then that comfort is pretty much whipped away almost immediately, because what that means is there aren't easy places for people to go. You know, I do believe I would say this wouldn't I, but we have some of the very best people working at Blood County UK and I have confidence that they'll be valued by a new organisation as they were by me.
00:38:21
Speaker
But I know that it's going to be harder than it would have been if this was last year or in a couple of years' time. So that adds a real weight and sadness even more to what it is that we've
Navigating Crisis with a Focused Mission
00:38:38
Speaker
got to do. But through all of this, what's your job as CEO of an organization? It is to do your very best to protect the mission. Our job is to beat blood cancer. And part of the way we do that
00:38:52
Speaker
is through having very talented, highly motivated, high performing people. But we don't exist for our staff. We exist for people affected by blood cancer. And I cannot do anything that would mean that puts the organization at risk of not being able to deliver on that mission. So I can't run through our reserves to a point where we couldn't fund new research or
00:39:21
Speaker
keep people employed to a point that would put the future of the organisation at Jeopardy or even run us to a point where as we emerge from this and it becomes clear how we will raise new money, like what will be the new ways that people will give because they will come. I know they will. When that's clear, I have to be able to invest in them. I have to have enough there that we can back the things that are working. And so that's why
00:39:49
Speaker
We've taken the decision that we've taken to put this proposal in place. And, you know, I ask myself every day, am I confident it's the right thing? And the honest answer is, I'm confident it's the best thing that I can see now with all the information that I have about what I think the future will be. But I am, if I'm really honest, agonised by the idea that in six months or a year,
00:40:17
Speaker
will look back and maybe two years even will know if it was the right thing. One of the things that sort of keeps me awake is what if I'm cutting too early? Other people haven't done this yet. What if actually there is an incredibly quick bounce back and then all these amazing people have gone from the organisation and as you said, maybe gone from the sector and I can't bring them back in? Would I then say that that was obviously the wrong decision? I would.
00:40:46
Speaker
But I just don't see that happening. And none of the data that I'm looking at tells me that we will bounce back in the next few months. I think it will be the next few years. So it's a very, very difficult time. And all I can do, and all I hope I'm doing in talking to the team about it and leading us through this process,
00:41:13
Speaker
is just being really transparent about how and why I'm making those proposals be available for people to talk to me, to express their sadness, their upset, their disagreement. Whatever it is that people would reasonably be feeling in this situation, make sure that I'm around to hear that and people have lots of ways to talk and feed in. And if I've got some of this wrong, I'll change it. That is what this period is about. There may well be things that I haven't seen or I haven't
00:41:42
Speaker
anticipated. But the reality is we couldn't carry on being an organisation of whatever we were, 125 people. That would not be the right thing. I know that. I know we can't afford that. So one way or another, we've got to reduce our size and keep our impact high. And that's what I'm going to try and do.
00:42:05
Speaker
I hear what you're saying in terms of having a laser focus on the mission for you as an organization is what is really going to take you forward into the future. Yeah. Is there anything, Gemma, that you think charity leaders can do to create paths back to the sector for these people who are potentially going to leave in the short term?
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah. So it's a conversation that I've started with a group of other Cancer Charity Chief Execs to say, firstly, how can we support people better? Lots of people, or certainly that group of organisations that I was talking to, I think it's on the cards for all of them. Many of them have announced this already. What can we do that supports those people? What can we do that creates paths back? How can we retain as much talent as possible? So I think
00:43:00
Speaker
that's what we've got to do. So for us that involves making sure those people have ongoing support post their time with us finishing in terms of reskilling, CV development, looking at different paths and keeping in touch with people. So we already have a kind of
00:43:18
Speaker
come to UK alumni programme, but you don't ever get to leave, we still keep in touch with things. But we will absolutely be doing that. I really hope we'll be in a position where we can start rehiring people again in the not too distant future. And I hope that I'll be able to get some of the brilliant people that I will inevitably end up losing back. But if they couldn't come back to us, then I would feel almost as good as if they came back to one of the other brilliant charities in the sector. Because it's such a
00:43:49
Speaker
as such a sad loss. Indeed. So Gemma, tell us a bit more about your own personal situation. I mean, you have already told us how this has been the most difficult period. What have you learned in terms of your leadership?
00:44:08
Speaker
I'm always curious as a chief executive, how you balance competing priorities of how much time do you spend looking at the external environment versus focusing internally and charting a course forward for your organization. How do you deal with that? Yeah, I'm always interested in that too. And I think in your time leading an organization, it changes, doesn't it? When I first joined Club Country Care, I was very internally focused. There was a lot of stuff I needed to sort out internally. And I think my first year
00:44:37
Speaker
was very, very focused on that. And then it started to be much more about external collaboration, funding conversations, partnership, those sorts of things. In this period, we haven't had the luxury of being able to focus more on one than the other because they both just suddenly hit huge priorities. I'm so grateful that I was as far through my tenure at Black Country UK as I was. I mean, I hadn't, you know,
00:45:06
Speaker
I'll be there three years in a couple of months. But I was through long enough that I had great relationships with a brilliant senior team who were working together well. And that meant that a lot of that internal stuff they were able to lead. And so that did mean that I could say, for instance, we were
00:45:28
Speaker
lucky in receiving one of the very small number of government grants that went to territories. That happened really because I was able to focus externally, spot that coming, give it a lot of time, of my time to make that happen. There have been a few things like that in this crisis where it's just taken, it's had to be the CEO that did it. There wasn't any other way of doing it. How do you balance time? I think
00:45:58
Speaker
I, the honest truth is I haven't done that very well in this crisis. You know, like I'm speaking to you after having had some time off last week. I think if we've been speaking before that, you know, you might have seen someone who was pretty frazzled and probably not giving enough attention to the things that I tell my team to give attention to all the time about how you need to kind of stay
00:46:24
Speaker
resilient and strong and understand enough about your own wellbeing to be able to give enough to the organisation. I thought I had really good things in place for that, but this pandemic has really challenged that on every level. And not least that it's not just that work got really hard, but actually having two kids got really hard, two school days kids got really hard too. So there was a kind of domestic
00:46:52
Speaker
work into faith and I think as well the other bit is emotionally it's been very hard so obviously if you work in a blood cancer charity all the time you face some stories of people in the most incredibly difficult situation and that's part of your job and that's part of what motivates you but for the last few months the number and volume and the acuteness of those stories and the distress in those stories and those conversations has been
00:47:20
Speaker
very overwhelming and not just for me and particularly for people in my team who are on the front line all the time. It's been very difficult so we've had to really look at emotional support. So that's to say it's been difficult. What have I learned? I've learned so much. I just need to make sure that I've got enough time to process what I have.
00:47:39
Speaker
I think you always do probably in a crisis, don't you? It's horrible to be in it and then you look back and you think I've learned a lot. One thing I've been really pleased about and we touched on it earlier is my style as a leader has always been, if you're criticising it, you would say, I overshare and I just talk from the heart too much. I'm not managed enough about what the messages are.
00:48:08
Speaker
I find that quite difficult to do. I find it very difficult to filter, really. I just tell people how I'm feeling about things. Actually, in this situation, I think that's been helpful. I've told the team about times where
00:48:26
Speaker
I've got up in the morning and haven't been sure if I can face another day or where, as this happens on several occasions, I've broken down because of something that's happened in a conversation. And actually, I think that's helped us as a team because it's like we're all in this. It's difficult for us in different ways at different times, but I feel that
00:48:51
Speaker
you know that voice of honesty being able to be honest and authentic and consistent like I'm here I will be here tomorrow when you come in I am here you will still be able to talk to me I will still be being honest with you about where we are I can't make this better I can't make it go away I wish I could I can't but I will not hide things from you you will know where we are at and you will know what is coming and you will know what my thinking is about what we're going to do
00:49:18
Speaker
And if you've got a better idea, you will have all the opportunities to tell me about it. And if you think I'm getting it wrong, you will be able to tell me that too. And actually that style, that way of leading an organization, I think has really come into its own in this crisis. I think it is at times of crisis that that has worked for us. So I think I've learned to be more confident in that. I think for a lot of my career,
00:49:47
Speaker
I've been trying to manage that bit of me out. You know, I've always thought I need to be different. I need to be, oh no, you know, I've also sort of looked at other people think, oh yeah, they're probably thinking, you know, they've managed to control that message better or they haven't, they've sort of played their cards more strategically or more cleverly than I have.
CEO Advice and Decision-Making
00:50:05
Speaker
And actually, I think I've become a lot more confident and comfortable in who I am as a leader through this and that that
00:50:15
Speaker
that I hope will be one of the positive things that stays with me personally. The other thing is, I think I've become a lot more confident in taking decisions without all the data. One of my challenges when I came into the organization was we didn't have good data on anything and I was used to, my mantra would have been, what's the data thing us? Don't want to go on your gut, I want to know what the evidence tells us about this and then we'll make a decision.
00:50:45
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time when I joined the organization, really trying to increase that rigor. And I'm glad I did. You know, that's helped us to a certain extent, but suddenly we're in a situation where, you know, you tell me what happens to this income line in a global disease pandemic. It wasn't even on my risk register. You know, all those systems and things don't have counted for not very much. And what's counted for a lot has been having a team of good people who know what they're doing, who are clear about what the organization does.
00:51:15
Speaker
and therefore how they need to respond to what's happening and then trusting them to get on with it. And I think that I've learned how to do that much better over the last few weeks, how long has it been, weeks and months than before. And that will be something that I won't want to lose, albeit I will feel much better when we're in a position where I can look back and say, oh, well, I understand this. This is what's happening now. We'll do this, if we ever get there.
00:51:45
Speaker
Indeed. So looking back from where you are now, Gemma, what advice would you give to yourself on day one of your very first CEO role? I think it would be to trust your instincts a bit more. So I particularly coming into this role, which was you say is my first chief exec role, this role. And I was so aware and also I've been out of the charity sector for 13 years. I've been in higher education in the NHS, so
00:52:16
Speaker
So I came, I had a lot of, I had instincts about things, but I had a lot of voices in my head saying, wait, you don't know enough yet. You don't know enough about the sector yet. You don't know enough about the organization yet. You need to just go slow and hear some more voices. And I think that's not to say that I think if I did it again, I would come in and say, bam, bam, bam. I don't think I would, but I think there was some key decisions.
00:52:46
Speaker
that I would accelerate. The other thing that's very difficult as a new CEO is establishing a relationship with your board quickly because I've got a brilliant board now and work really effectively with them and I'm very grateful for that, particularly for the chair who I work very well with.
00:53:04
Speaker
So managing through this period with them, when I knew I had their trust and I knew them and I knew what they needed and I knew what I needed from them, that's very different when you arrive as a new CEO into an organization and you don't quite know how they're going to be judging you as a chief exec. And I think as a first chief exec, or at least maybe I shouldn't speak for me,
00:53:30
Speaker
You really want to be clear very quickly about what good looks like for those people. And if you're not, you can spend quite a lot of time trying to second guess it and waste time doing that. So I had a slight difficult situation in that the chair that recruited me wasn't there by the time I started and there was a temporary chair and then later on we hired the permanent chair who we've got now. And so through that, being new and having that period of uncertainty and therefore not being totally clear about
00:54:00
Speaker
how they were going to judge success and whether or not I was going to be the same way that I would judge success for the organization slowed us down a bit, I think. And I think I was very, so one thing I got right was to focus on culture early. You know, I came in saying, we've got to get the culture right. And it isn't right at the moment. And I wasn't a genius. Everyone in the organization was telling me it wasn't right. So I just listened to that. But and it was right to focus on that. But I think at the same time,
00:54:29
Speaker
I could have more quickly plotted a course to write, and also this is some of the things we're going to sort out practically at the same time. So I think I might have, I might have accelerated some of that, I think. And definitely, you know, this, I've learned so much in this job, nevermind what we've just talked about in the last three months. Of course, I've learned so much that I look back and I think, oh, if I knew what I knew now, I could go back and do it all in half the time.
00:54:59
Speaker
But no doubt, if I go on to do another job in the future, then we have the same conversation again. Presumably the same thing will happen again. And if it doesn't, then that means I stop learning. And that would be, I mean, the job was boring and that would be a mistake. Now I'm very lucky to have this job. It's been, it's been a huge learning. It's given me so much in terms of me personally, as well as, as well as professionally.
00:55:27
Speaker
And we're going to leave it there for part one of my conversation with Gemma Peters. In part two, we explore what diversity, equity and inclusion really means for the charity sector. Gemma shares the responsibility she feels being a white leader with an all white board executive team and with predominantly white scientific researchers.
00:55:47
Speaker
We look at specific initiatives that Blood Cancer UK are pursuing to address this, and how, as a sector, we can look to disestablish racist structures. Part two is available immediately, so please download the episode to listen now.
00:56:02
Speaker
Meanwhile, if you enjoyed the show, please click the subscribe button on your podcast app and consider leaving us a five star review. It will only take a few seconds and reviews really help make a difference to increase the visibility of the podcast and help spread the word. Visit the charityceo.com website for full show details and to submit questions for future guests. Thank you for listening.