Building an idea engine

A seven-week deep dive to ideate, test and validate new opportunities for
leading mental health training provider, MHFA England.

Creative concept mockups for MHFA England

About MHFA England

MHFA England is a social enterprise offering expert guidance and training to support mental health in the workplace and beyond. As a licensed provider of Mental Health First Aid training from MHFA International, based in Australia, they are working across England to deliver their mission to raise awareness and empower people to support mental health. With over 2,500 qualified instructors, they have trained over one million individuals to date, aiming to educate one in ten adults through their courses.

Rethinking growth

The COVID pandemic accelerated mental health awareness and helped solidify MHFA England as the go-to educator on mental health in the workplace and beyond. This prompted the organisation to revisit its growth strategy and explore new opportunities to shape its five-year roadmap through an innovation programme.

The big question MHFA England set us:

How can we create a pipeline of mental health workplace offerings that meet evolving needs, so that we can cement our existing position as a market leader through our services and broaden our ability to help?

Having previously run standalone innovation cycles, the organisation wanted this new programme to have longevity. To achieve this, MHFA England partnered with &us to identify core business opportunities and unlock new ideas while embedding the right mindsets and practices into their ways of working. We delivered this over an intensive seven-week programme that included a mix of training and creative sessions, as well as the design of several prototypes. 

Three grounding principles

Our work grew from three key principles, designed to keep strategy and ideas focused on real-world needs and priorities without limiting the team’s creativity.

megaphone-icon

Prioritise the customer voice

We put the voice of the customer at the heart of the project from the start, to make sure any ideas generated were informed by genuine insight and live feedback.

To do this, we interviewed over 60 existing customers, internal stakeholders, and prospective customers across several stages of the project to gather insights. This helped make the problems the MHFA England team were trying to solve tangible. It also enabled the team to identify ways to produce meaningful impact for both MHFA England’s customers and the wider organisation.

three-paths-icon

Encourage expansive ideation

MHFA England’s focus on mental health means the organisation is necessarily process-driven and sensitive to the nature of its work. While these qualities are essential for delivering effective courses, they can also limit early innovation – slowing progress and constraining divergent thinking. To counter this, we created a space for the team to ‘play’ beyond fixed processes. Using new tools, techniques, and mindsets, the team was encouraged to experiment freely, uncovering creative solutions that addressed customer and business challenges.

team-with-idea-icon

Experiment early and often

Establishing a safe space for ideas to flow was supported by introducing an experimentation mindset early in the process. With stimulus focused on what good experimentation looks like, the team learned to think widely while identifying ways to test and validate their ideas. This approach extended beyond ideation to include refining ideas and deepening insights into customer needs. By embedding experimentation into the process, MHFA England can de-risk innovation, prioritise ideas efficiently, and focus efforts where they could have the most impact.

Four delivery stages

four-delivery-stages

We kicked off with in-person sessions to introduce our three principles, innovation practices and the notion of working with agility. 

Our approach helped the team unlock value early by tackling live, in-person challenges. This drove visible progress for the organisation, while also allowing the team to actively practice the new skills and capabilities they were developing in real scenarios.

Capturing bold new ideas

During the ideation phase, the MHFA England team produced over 50 ideas focused on growth, supplementing or evolving the organisation's training course products and services.

 

 

ideas-gallery

Bringing the ideas to life

We collaborated with MHFA England to test and validate these ideas with customers, instructors, and stakeholders. The insights gathered helped indicate which ideas had potential for significant impact and aligned with the evolving mental health needs of workplaces and beyond. 

hmw-image

The testing process helped identify seven ideas to develop into prototypes, including four quick wins and three longer-term strategies.

idea-mockups

“&us was a truly collaborative partner. Over the seven weeks, their coaches really understood our organisation, upskilled our team, and made the process of generating ideas and experimenting incredibly rewarding. We’re excited to see these ideas come to life!”

Susannah Mohammed, Head of Development

Key outcomes

brain-icon

The capabilities to drive innovation further

MHFA England’s team had a rapid introduction to experimenting with ideas and customer research. This helped the team learn how to de-risk innovation effectively by generating ideas and testing them quickly, alongside the importance of sharing progress and learnings early and often. These behaviours and skills, nurtured through active collaboration with &us practitioners, have established a strong foundation for the team to lead similar initiatives in the future.

maze

Validated opportunities for growth

With a clear list of prioritised, high-value opportunities, the MHFA England team can now focus on further experimentation and implementation. In addition, they have access to the wider pool of over 50 ideas to evaluate and pull inspiration from in the future in their mission to unlock new growth.

Vector 155-4
Squiggle graphic

Ready to get started?

Get in touch