A catch up with Sarah Thistlethwaite, Senior Consultant

In this article, we catch up with Sarah Thistlethwaite, Senior Consultant with the Transformation and Change team. We are pleased to welcome Sarah, who brings a wealth of expertise and experience within the Local Authority sector to the Altair team.

As one of the newest members of the team at Altair, tell us about your background and experience so far:

I am joining Altair having spent over a decade working within a local authority (Kirklees Council). Over the years, I have led a range of large and complex transformation projects and programmes – predominantly within Adult Social Care and Corporate Services. I was also the lead for the Covid Response Programme – managing the delivery of responsive services and projects during the pandemic alongside the Executive Team and the wider Kirklees partnership.

In my last role, I managed the Improvement and Assurance function within Kirklees’ social housing service – a landlord with 22,000 units. I led a team of around 30 colleagues and had responsibility for the service’s Transformation Programme and governance activities. I also drove a redesign of the improvement function and the recruitment and development of roles across project management, business assurance, IT and business analysis. Some of the improvement activities I oversaw included:

• The service’s preparations and improvement plan to become ‘inspection ready’ in light of the new Regulatory regime,
• A large-scale process redesign across the housing management function, and,
• The implementation of a new housing management IT system (Cx).

I have always been a strong advocate for learning and development opportunities for colleagues at Kirklees – I am incredibly passionate about supporting people to reach their ambitions.

Relevant qualifications, work experience, extra curriculars.

I did an MBA, specialising in change management and organisational culture, and graduated with a distinction in 2018. Through this I also gained a CMI Level 7. In addition, I currently have:

• MSP Practitioner
• BCS Business Analysis Foundation

I completed Systems Thinking training with Vanguard in my early years as a project officer – which ignited my interest in learning and developing in change management theory and application!

I also took part in the Local Government Association’s ‘LG Challenge’ and got to the final! This provided my first insight into working with different local authorities to identify solutions to problems.

What attracted you most to join Altair ?

I had the pleasure of previously working as a client with Altair and I found them great to work with, in addition to being very knowledgeable about the sector. When the opportunity with Altair was advertised, I felt drawn to applying as I already knew I’d get to work with a great group of people (and I was right!).

The driving force behind my application was the opportunity to apply my skills and experience to different organisations. I am really passionate about change and creating services that are more efficient for both the staff working in them and the people who receive those services – I am very outcome-focused. Working for Altair will allow me to do this in many different organisations and I have no doubt I will learn a lot along the way.

What expertise do you bring that you think will be of most value to your role at Altair, and what skills are you hoping to develop?

The skills I bring to Altair are Project and Programme Management, Change Management, Research and Analysis (I believe in using data to support intelligence-led decision-making), Process Redesign, and Stakeholder Management. I’ve also worked on a number of technology-driven projects from a business and user perspective and would love to do more of that.

I have a background in Adult Social Care operations and Social Housing operations and regulation.

I’m really keen to develop skills in writing publications too as I do miss the research and writing side of academia – something I never thought I’d say!

How do you like to spend your free time? What do you do on weekends?

I have two children, both boys (11 and 5) and they tend to dictate what we do – a lot of lego, lightsaber battles and Mario Kart! We recently got English Heritage memberships so have been enjoying going to lots of old abbeys and castles (well I do, I think three abbeys in one day proved to be too much for my kids…). We try to get out camping at weekends too if the weather allows (though I put my foot down on that in November).

I enjoy running and I am also a kickboxer (aiming for black belt!) plus going out to comedy gigs or just for drinks with friends. I did my first degree in music and whilst I don’t do it as often these days, I used to be an avid brass bander.