case study

CATS PROTECTION

Assessing Leadership Effectiveness post restructure

The Challenge

Following a recent restructure that reshaped its leadership team, Cats Protection, a national animal welfare charity, needed to understand the impact of these changes on leaders, the wider organisation, and its ‘customers’. The charity sought to identify effective next steps to enhance operational effectiveness and achieve strategic goals.

The Solution

Dragonfish was commissioned to conduct a 12-month series of culture diagnostic activities with Cats Protection’s leadership community (approximately 80 leaders). These activities aimed to provide the People Team with insights and opportunities to support leaders in managing the change and fostering a culture conducive to achieving organisational goals.

The process began with a 37-question Lumin culture survey in February 2025, distributed to all leaders. The initial survey was followed by a series of focus groups diving deeper into 4x themes that emerged from the original investigation; trust, psychological safety, connectivity, and accountability. The goal was to strengthen solution recommendations and drive targeted, impactful next steps.

Concurrently, an organisation-wide people survey was conducted, allowing for the layering of data to compare findings, identify perception gaps, and pinpoint challenges across the entire organisation, not just within leadership.

The Outcomes

Bespoke leadership culture survey to assess restructure impact and identify areas for improvement.
Survey report and leadership briefing sessions to disseminate findings, insights, and recommendations.
Deep dive focus groups to further explore survey results and refine solutions.
Deep dive report and leadership briefing sessions to prioritise and action impactful next steps.

The Impact

Data-driven, flexible approach to drive impact and effectiveness.
Iterative and inclusive insight and recommendation development.
Prioritised next-step actions to instigate meaningful change within the leadership community and wider organisation.

Cats Protection is currently implementing these actions, and a final survey is planned to measure the impact of solutions and track progress in leadership sentiment and effectiveness.

“Large organisational change is complex, and we wanted to do something different to really embed our intentions and all the benefits surrounding the change we made as an organisation. The findings and insights provided through Lumin, and the Dragonfish team gave us an honest look at what was working and what we still needed to do to build a strong, unified leadership team and culture within the organisation. The recommended solutions helped us focus on the most important things we already had in mind, so we could take the right steps, in the right order, to get quick and powerful results.
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Julie meredith

Associate Director of Volunteering, People Engagement and Inclusion