Case Study · Lifebox · Global health non-profit · A charity developed at every level, the newest team members to the global leadership
Lifebox works to make surgery safer in countries around the world, with people spread across continents. Over more than a year, 54 of them were developed as one organisation, from the newest team members to the global leadership team.
Lifebox works to make surgery safer in countries around the world, with people spread across continents. Over more than a year, 54 of them were developed as one organisation, from the newest team members to the global leadership team.People developed across the charity
0
every level of a globally dispersed non-profit, from organisation-wide inclusion to the leadership team
2 programmes
one developing the whole organisation through inclusion, one developing the global leadership team
9.6/10
Performance Partners across the organisation-wide inclusion programme, rated by a globally dispersed cohort
Front line to leaders
the same investment reached the newest team members and the global leadership team alike
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Global health non-profit
- Buyer
- Global Head of HR
The Brief
Develop Lifebox's people across a charity whose teams are spread over many countries and time zones, and do it as one organisation rather than one team at a time. Reach everyone, with an organisation-wide programme building inclusion into how Lifebox works day to day. And develop a global leadership team so they could lead the charity's next chapter as a united team. As a non-profit where every pound has to show up in the mission, the development also had to be practical and earn its place.
The Outcome
Across more than a year, 54 of Lifebox's people were developed at every level: the whole organisation through an inclusion programme, and the global leadership team through a management development programme, with a Difficult Conversations workshop alongside. By the end, the leadership team led more as one, managers were running fairer meetings and braver conversations back in the real job, and the charity had built its own shared language for managing and including. All of it in service of the thing that matters most to Lifebox, safer surgery for patients around the world.
From the leadership
100% would recommend working with 10X Managers. The flow of conversation created was managed brilliantly and touched on topics important for us at Lifebox.
Emotional intelligence is critical for leadership we wanted to develop as part of the work with 10X and they really made it land. Some of these messages will stick with me for a long time to come.”
Cleopatra Mushanganiso
Global Head of HR, Lifebox
01 / The trigger
Lifebox had just strengthened its leadership team, and it wanted inclusion to be real across a charity spread around the world. It chose to build both deliberately, as it grew.
Lifebox works to make surgery and anaesthesia safer for patients in the places that need it most, and that work is carried by people scattered far from any single head office. The charity had just strengthened its leadership team, bringing in new people and moving others into executive roles for the first time, and it wanted to help that team find its feet and pull together quickly. At the same time, Lifebox wanted inclusion to live in the everyday work of an organisation whose people span many countries, languages and backgrounds, rather than sit in a policy no one reaches for.
For a charity as dispersed as Lifebox, both of those ambitions come down to the same thing: connection. The people who lead it sit in different countries and rarely share a room, and the people who carry its mission come from very different settings. A shared way of leading, and a shared understanding of inclusion, were never going to spread on their own.
As a non-profit, Lifebox also carries a discipline that shapes every decision: money raised is money that could otherwise reach the mission, so any investment in its people had to earn its place and show up in how the charity works. They wanted development that was practical and that reached everyone, not a one-off session for a few.
So the brief to 10X had two halves, pitched at two levels. Build inclusion into the whole organisation, so it is understood and owned by everyone. And develop the global leadership team, so the people steering Lifebox lead well and lead together.
02 / Built for a charity
Not an off-the-shelf course dropped on a head office. A partnership built for a non-profit whose people are spread across the world.
10X did not arrive at Lifebox with a fixed programme to install. We built around how a global non-profit actually works: people in many countries and time zones, a mission that has to come first, and a budget where every pound is accountable to that mission. The work ran live and online so it reached people wherever they were, and it was shaped around the real situations Lifebox's people face, not generic examples.
How it worked
We were never the expert at the front of the room.
10X's principle is that the answers an organisation needs are mostly already inside it, held across its people. A charity as dispersed as Lifebox rarely gets to use that, because the people who hold those answers are in different countries and rarely in the same room. So the sessions were built to connect people and draw out what they already knew, not to lecture from a slide.
A team member in one country worked a real problem next to a colleague in another, comparing how they each handle the same situation in very different settings. The Performance Partners' job was to draw that knowledge out and connect it, powered by the context Lifebox's own people brought, so the learning belonged to Lifebox rather than being imported.
It showed. Across the rooms, leaders who rarely work side by side kept arriving independently at the same answers, then borrowing each other's methods, with one held up by the others as the person to learn from for drawing out the quieter voices. The strongest ideas were Lifebox's own. The Performance Partners' job was to surface them and make them stick.
For a charity, that approach does something a course cannot: it turns the development itself into a way for a scattered organisation to meet, compare notes and become more connected, while the budget stays pointed at the mission.
03 / Every level
Two programmes, one charity: inclusion for everyone, and leadership for the people steering Lifebox.
This was not development for the senior team alone. It ran the full height of Lifebox. An organisation-wide inclusion programme reached the whole charity, building a shared, practical understanding of inclusion into everyday work, wherever Lifebox's people are. And a management development programme took the global leadership team and developed them to lead the charity together. A Difficult Conversations workshop ran alongside, for the moments that test any manager.
What ran, across the charity
Organisation-wide inclusion
An inclusion programme open to everyone, building a shared and practical understanding of inclusion across the whole charity.
The global leadership team
The CEO, the Heads of HR, Finance and Clinical, regional programme leads and more, many stepping into executive roles for the first time, developed to lead the charity and to lead together.
Difficult conversations
A focused workshop for the leadership group on holding the hard conversations every manager has to handle well.
Live and online, worldwide
Delivered across time zones, so a team member in one country and a director in another were developing in the same sessions.
Run that way, two things happened at once. The leadership team grew closer, and the whole charity started to build something it had not had before: one shared way to talk about managing and including.
05 / What changed
The change showed up in the everyday work: fairer meetings, braver conversations, and a leadership team that holds together.
The most telling changes at Lifebox were not in the workshop room. They were back in the job, where managers came back having done things differently.
Back in the job
Fairer meetings
Lifebox moved recurring global meetings to times that work across continents, so the same colleagues are no longer always the ones dialling in late at night, and brought in translation so people whose first language is not English can take full part.
Seniority set aside
One leader began naming which role they were speaking in, so their team raised concerns more freely instead of deferring to the most senior person in the room.
The quieter voices first
Leaders started seeking out the people who do not speak up before the meeting, not just the loudest in it, and naming bias out loud when a decision was being rushed.
Harder conversations, sooner
Managers began having the candid, kind and constructive conversations early, rather than letting things run until they became a crisis.
Underneath the specifics, two bigger things shifted. A leadership team that had only just formed now works as a team rather than a scatter of individuals. And inclusion became something Lifebox's people could name, notice and act on day to day, not a policy filed away.
Across the inclusion programme, Lifebox's people rated their Performance Partners 9.6 out of 10.
In their own words
Hear it from the people leading Lifebox.
“I came away with a better understanding of what to do to be truly inclusive, and practical steps for understanding our vision and implementing it across the team.”
“This should not only be a starter package for anyone stepping into managing teams, but also for anyone wanting to understand the dynamics of managing people. It was a beautiful reminder to sit back and look at these skills with fresh eyes.”
06 / Start here
If you are a charity or non-profit that needs every pound to show up in the mission, an organisation whose people are spread across many countries, or a leadership team that needs to come together rather than lead in isolation, that is the work we do.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.