Tavistock Consulting at 30 … in the NHS, for the NHS
By Ben Gibbs
Tavistock Consulting celebrated 30 years of consultancy practice with an event focused on building workforce resilience and future-proofing the NHS.
On 6th March 2025, Tavistock Consulting celebrated 30 years as a specialist consultancy service with an anniversary conference in Belsize Park.
Attended by NHS Executives, senior leaders, managers and frontline workers, as well as consultants, colleagues and friends from across the health sector and beyond, the conference explored what drives behaviour, performance and outcomes in the NHS, and how best to develop the resilient workforce required to deliver reform.
A rich and varied agenda included talks from three senior NHS leaders who have benefitted from Tavistock Consulting’s services in different ways:
- Matthew Trainer, CEO at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and HSJ’s ‘CEO of the year’, spoke in his keynote address about his experience of executive coaching and how Tavistock Consulting can help leadership teams tackle some of their key workforce challenges.
- Louise Ashley, Interim Regional Chief Nurse, NHS England East of England Region and former CEO, Homerton Healthcare Foundation Trust, explored how the ‘systems psychodynamics’ model that underpins Tavistock Consulting’s approach has informed her successful and celebrated leadership practice.
- Percy Watungwa, Deputy Director of Nursing and Kerrie Myall, Head of Clinical Education – both at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust – presented a series of case studies of successful consultancy interventions in their setting.
Our three guests were complemented by several of Tavistock Consulting’s leadership team from the past 30 years, alongside a range of workshops in breakout sessions which went deeper into the issues and scenarios at play.
Charlotte Williams, Tavistock Consulting’s Director, outlined the enduring relevance of the Tavistock model, and why the approach is perhaps more relevant now than ever in the NHS and other organisations.
Charlotte Williams, Director of Tavistock Consulting shares our vision supporting the NHS workforce and its leaders
These past few years have tested the resilience of our healthcare system in ways we could scarcely have imagined. The NHS now finds itself gearing up to deliver an ambitious reform agenda while managing significant financial, structural and workforce challenges, and – of course – continuing to meet dynamic patient demand. In other words, not just fixing but also transforming the plane while flying it!
Charlotte Williams ,Tavistock Consulting’s Director
Charlotte went on to outline how the NHS’s challenges are not simply technical problems awaiting technical solutions. They are complex and adaptive, and evoke powerful emotions, including anxiety, uncertainty, feelings associated with loss, sadness, anger, and of course hope. Critically, these emotions shape behaviour at every level of the system, and can, if they are not fully acknowledged, drive decision-making, which often do not lead to the best outcomes.
In times of such complexity, uncertainty and transition, the systems psychodynamic approach we use here at Tavistock Consulting can provide a distinctive and valuable way to frame leadership and management. Unlike approaches that focus solely on structural solutions or process improvements, our work acknowledges that organisations are emotional environments where unconscious processes powerfully influence behaviour. Of course, we are also part of the NHS which means that we are truly a resource for the NHS, within the NHS, reinvesting any surplus from our work back into NHS services, keeping the NHS pound within the NHS!
Charlotte Williams ,Tavistock Consulting’s Director
ABOUT TAVISTOCK CONSULTING
Established in 1994 as a unit within the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, Tavistock Consulting works ‘below the surface’ of organisational life, helping people to make sense of ‘what’s really going on’. Its consultants help clients in a range of sectors to face and solve complex organisational challenges, building a client organisation’s capacity to understand and influence organisational behaviour. The intention is to improve wellbeing and effectiveness by attending to the emotional experience of staff.
Speaking before the conference, Tavistock Consulting’s Founding Director Jon Stokes said: “We need to understand how best to run organisations positively and constructively. Given how much time people spend at work, improving their experience of it, and thereby their wellbeing, will have a significant impact on the health of the nation overall.”