Your Own Place

Norwich

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Honest reflections of a new CEO

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Following on from her interview welcoming Zoe as our new CEO, facilitator Emily reconnected with Zoe, six months on, to hear about her reflections on becoming Chief Executive Officer of a social enterprise.

Hi Zoe! Before we get started with the serious reflective questions, some quick-fires for you:

What’s your most-used emoji? 😂

Fruit or vegetable? Fruit

Summer or Winter? Summer

Movie or book? Book! I’m currently reading Friends and Purpose, by Maff Potts

What does your YOP induction mug say? Visionary, Font of Knowledge and Proper Northern Lass

So, Zoe, last time we got together to blog, we were introducing you, your priorities, and your experiences. This time, I’d love to focus on what you’ve been learning and thinking about since being in the CEO role.

First off, how have you been settling into the role?

Wow – I feel inspired and challenged. It’s a strange combo of feeling like I’ve been here for ages, to feeling like I’ve still got so much to learn. 
Becoming a CEO has made me think a lot about my leadership style, reflecting on hierarchy, taking people with me, authenticity, humility, and boundaries. Inclusivity is also important to me when making decisions – I want people to be involved. The title of CEO can impact this, and there’s definitely discomfort with this for me. I’ve understood again just how essential it is for people to share their perspective, but how hierarchy can affect this – and I have been reflecting on ways to make it safe for colleagues to share their perspectives.

It sounds like you’ve had a lot of thought around how you lead in your role. Transition can also bring these considerations up, and reflection on the leadership style that has come before. Taking the reins from a Founder CEO must be a unique experience!

Yes, this isn’t something I’ve done before!

What has this been like? How has this challenged you?

I’m in awe of and have total respect for Your Own Place’s Founder and previous CEO, Rebecca White. 
At the same time, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t trying to replicate her – but I also didn’t want to let her, the team or the partners down. I think it’s important that I am authentic to me, while not creating disruption for the team.

That’s a lot to balance – and I agree, we want you to lead as you! What have been the highlights so far of becoming CEO of Your Own Place?

The team are amazing people and each person brings their own talent. The team’s collective passion and commitment to Your Own Place’s values, mission and vision are inspiring and this passion and commitment both shine through in everything the team does. They work really hard, but also make sure they look after each other and have fun. The team has welcomed me in true Your Own Place style, and I feel accepted.
Another highlight is how receptive partners have been. Your Own Place has a strong positive reputation, and I’m loving making connections and developing our relationships for continued collaboration.

Oh, I’m so glad that we’ve welcomed you warmly! When we blogged before, you talked about our approaches being a huge attraction of Your Own Place. Where have you seen this in action?

I’m seeing the approaches in action all the time! The team consistently demonstrates the organisational values. They do what they say they will do, they recognise what matters to people and always approach from a place of equity and empathy, ensuring their support is asset-based, restorative and, above all, human.

As someone who is part of our amazing team, I’m blushing! We also talked about your purpose before, how is being CEO of Your Own Place aligning with your purpose?

My purpose is to challenge in the name of social justice; I have a strong desire to create meaningful change and contribute to building a more inclusive and equitable society.
Homelessness prevention aligns with these purposes: bolstering individual and community resilience, sharing important knowledge, and building confidence in individuals to seek help and challenge injustice – this is what gets me out of bed in the morning!
The Your Own Place team are skilled and well-placed to enable this through their workshops, community conversations and engagement work.
I feel rewarded from making a positive difference in people’s lives and thrive on the opportunity to innovate and develop effective solutions to complex and pressing social issues – the way that we at Your Own Place work flexibly to co-create with and meet the needs of the people and communities we’re working with exemplifies this.

Mind blown – thank you for summarising our work so passionately. Zoe, what is your vision and hope for the future of Your Own Place?

My vision is that everyone has a safe and sustainable home, that they are able to keep and manage effectively. The vision is to prevent homelessness wherever possible.
My hope is that there is more long-term investment in preventing poverty and homelessness. That Your Own Place can continue to build its presence in the prevention space through demonstrating its strength in building trusting, human relationships that facilitate change, and therefore deepen its contribution to community capacity for preventing homelessness.
I hope that we continue to participate in supporting people to recognise their potential, their power and their voice, as well as supporting communities to recognise their assets and use their power.

Thank you for sharing that, Zoe. What are your hopes for the team at Your Own Place?

I feel so confident that the team has the behaviours, skills and knowledge to enable Your Own Place’s growth – and I want us to do this together. We’ve undergone two significant transitions in a short space of time – a new CEO and an office move – and I can see that this can impact confidence in decision making. I trust the team wholeheartedly and want us to continue to work in a restorative way with each other. I want to continue to grow the confidence of the team and embrace the value of each individual’s perspective and strengths. I can’t say enough how incredible the team is – highly skilled and dedicated to the mission – and I want them to thrive. I also want to be able to offer the best possible working conditions.

Any other thoughts about the future of Your Own Place as an organisation?

Of course – I hope that we continue to work with our partners and develop new partnerships too. I’m interested in looking at homelessness prevention from all angles to find ways to embed it wherever it fits.
Organisationally, I aim for the freedom to shape our organisational structure in a way that is effective for us, and not just a traditional hierarchical structure. I want to provide opportunities for the existing team – they go above and beyond without exception and are encouraged to identify their “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” which supports us to consider growth opportunities within Your Own Place.
I also want to provide opportunities for new people to join our organisation, including people with lived and living experience. We were unable to secure funding for our previous model of a living experience informed advisory board, and I continue to explore how we can build this back into our organisation. It’s important that the people we work with are at the core of Your Own Place: their ideas, experience and knowledge woven through everything. Collaboration and co-creation are essential.

Amazing – the future is looking very exciting. Finally, what are you looking forward to more of over the coming months?

It’s high on my agenda to visit more workshops and community engagement time to see the team in action.
I’m also excited to continue to collaborate on our new office together, exploring how we make our new environment work for us. I know that necessity is the driver of change, and our new chapter at Carrow House gives us the opportunity to reset and review. It’s also a space where we can embed our roots in the community more, spending more time in the spaces that are already accessed by the people we work with, rather than asking them to come to us. This strategic shift towards place-based models is exemplified by the work we do with Colchester Borough Homes and Norwich Foodbanks – these projects demonstrate to us a different and effective way to reach people. Continuing to build on what we learn together will only make us more resilient and stronger.

Zoe, thank you so much for spending time catching up with me. I’ve really enjoyed hearing your insights into the journey of a new CEO and your hopes and plans for the future of Your Own Place.

Connect with Zoe on LinkedIn

Reflections on Change

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Each quarter a member of the Your Own Place team is going to share an insight into their role at Your Own Place and what they have recently been up to as part of it. This quarter our Chief Operating Officer (COO), Jess Luce-Rackham shares about her experience of organisational and leadership change.

Over the last six months, Your Own Place’s CEO transition has been a hot topic of conversation with partners, with peers at training events and within our organisation. We’re very much still in a period of transition, systems are a quick(ish) switchover but embedding new humans in the team takes longer. I thought I would use this space to share some of the tools we have used to manage a large change within our small, bustling, values-driven social enterprise. 

The Decelerator support service 

The Decelerator is a free support service that offers information, tools and hands-on support for creating better endings. Earlier this year I had a one-hour 1-2-1 coaching call with a member of their team, to talk through my concerns, thoughts and ideas following our founder (Rebecca) moving on from Your Own Place and our new CEO (Zoe) joining. With a busy diary, I wasn’t particularly sold by the idea of finding space in my calendar. However, using the call to pause, reflect and talk to someone with no connections to Your Own Place was invaluable. I was introduced to the Bridges’ transition model, which influenced how I planned the next steps with the team. 

Team collaboration – transition planning workshop

In early August, Jess Marsh (Lead Facilitator) and I facilitated a one-hour team workshop using the three stages of the Bridges’ Transition Model as a structure. The Model identifies three clear phases of a transition following a big change event, and how these may impact team morale. By approaching these ahead of time, the aim was to improve awareness and identify how we could support each other through each phase.

By asking the team coaching-style questions, we collaborated to identify how we would manage the leadership change, considered what we needed as individuals and as a team, and all took responsibility going forward. 

The team transition plan, key messages and review process 

Following the workshop, I summarised what we had agreed during the meeting and key messages for the time period; ultimately things we may all need to hear when we’re stretched and in the thick of the transition. This summary document was circulated with the team, the Board, and our social investors, and is now part of my ongoing review cycle. 

Our team commitments included: 

*Team Days – at Your Own Place five days per year are allocated as ‘Team Days’. These days focus on spending time connecting together, they provide space for whole team training and development or can be designated space for team wellbeing initiatives or support.

What’s next? 

We are currently completing our annual 360 feedback process, where all team members will receive feedback about their strengths and development areas. Providing a structured, values-led and honest feedback loop where all team members have the space to share their views feels more important than ever. 

To finish… 

Ultimately change at work can be hard. There will be some days it feels easy and other days it feels difficult. Within all this, we have to consider our personal relationship to change, what skills we have banked on before and then how they can be applied to the next change we encounter.

Partner Insights: Rebecca Claydon

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Emily caught up with Rebecca Claydon, Customer Voice Lead at Freebridge Community Housing, to find out more about Rebecca’s background, top tips for championing customer voice and, what we really need to know, what weapon she’d use in a zombie apocalypse!

“Rebecca meets with either me or Beth (facilitator at Your Own Place) on a monthly basis to discuss plans for the regular Service Champions Forum. We meet on Teams this month, creative juices flowing to design the last Forum of the year. Luckily, Rebecca agrees to an interview and isn’t phased by our entryboard questions as she sees them regularly!


What’s your favourite pizza topping?
I always judge a pizzeria by its margarita pizza – if they cannot get that right, it’s game over!

If you were a plant, what plant would you be?
Yellow winter Jasmine as it smells great and brightens up any grey day!

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A remote island in the Bay of Bengal

Rebecca’s quick-fire need-to-knows:
Coffee/tea order: Iced espresso
Favourite biscuit: Dark chocolate digestive

Next, I wanted to find out a bit more about Rebecca’s background and what drew her to Customer Voice.

Tell us a bit about you and your journey to your current role.

I began my career in a London hotel marketing agency, travelling the country to help hoteliers create tailored rewards packages that boosted business during quiet periods. Loving the challenge of new industries, I took this experience into social housing, where, alongside a fantastic team and an inspiring CEO, we launched the first tenant reward scheme in the South of England.
From there, I explored fundraising, and then led a community festival in Kensington & Chelsea, balancing the needs of residents, sponsors, and trustees to deliver an event everyone loved. Next, I joined The View from The Shard team, working with another inspiring leadership group to create an unforgettable visitor experience. After a brief role in customer service at ExCeL London and managing a flagship Barnardo’s charity shop, the pandemic made me rethink.
I decided to return to Norfolk and to housing — the industry where I felt I made the biggest impact. I spotted an opportunity at Freebridge, applied, and here I am!

What interested you about Customer Voice?

I’ve always been passionate about listening to people’s experiences and finding ways to use their insights to shape better services. My career has taken me across diverse industries — from hotel marketing to social housing, community festivals, and customer service in renowned venues. In each role, I found that understanding people’s needs, concerns, and aspirations was the key to delivering real value. This passion naturally led me to Customer Voice, where the focus is on ensuring customers feel heard, valued, and empowered.

What particularly interests me about Customer Voice is the opportunity to connect the dots between customers’ experiences and organisational improvements. Whether it’s through initiatives like myFreebridge or collaborating with Service Champions, Customer Ambassadors or the Community Voices, I love facilitating conversations that uncover what really matters to people. Using these insights to drive positive change — improving services, enhancing team morale, and boosting customer satisfaction — is incredibly rewarding.

It’s crucial to ensure customers’ voices aren’t just heard, but genuinely influence decision-making and lead to meaningful, measurable improvements. Ultimately, championing Customer Voice is about building trust, transparency, and stronger relationships, which benefits both customers and the organisation.

Wow, it’s amazing to hear about your experience across different sectors and it’s so clear you have passion supporting people to share their voices and be heard, ensuring this is backed up with action. On this note – what are your aims for tenant engagement?

My aim for tenant engagement is to ensure that Customer Voice is fully integrated into Freebridge’s strategic decision-making, going beyond simply listening to customers to actively using their feedback to shape services and improve their homes. Having worked on impactful community projects like organising the vigil at Grenfell Tower, I understand how vital it is to make sure people feel heard and valued. This experience reinforced my belief that genuine engagement is about building trust and demonstrating that customers’ input leads to meaningful action.

At Freebridge, the Customer Influence Plan reflects this philosophy by ensuring engagement is woven into the fabric of all our services. I’m committed to empowering customers to influence decisions that affect their homes and communities, in line with our ambitious ‘Building Better Futures’ objectives. However, engagement isn’t just about collecting feedback—it’s about using that feedback to influence strategic decisions, ensuring that customers see their views reflected in tangible outcomes. This closing the loop shows customers that they are not only heard but respected and valued.

On a personal note, my aim is to make tenant engagement feel innovative, fun, and accessible. Engagement should come from a place of trust and transparency, where promises are never made lightly, and integrity is key. By fostering this approach, we can create a culture where customer engagement becomes an ongoing, positive force that enhances both the services we offer and the lives of our tenants. When customers are engaged and happy, Freebridge will naturally be a great place to work too.

Your Own Place’s values really connect with your approach to engagement – making it innovative and accessible, transparent and restorative. How does Your Own Place support you to work towards your aims with engagement?

Your Own Place plays a crucial role in helping Freebridge achieve its Customer Influence goals, particularly through its support in hosting focus groups and facilitating monthly meetings with Service Champions. Their expertise in independent facilitation ensures that the feedback gathered is unbiased, creating an environment where the operational side of Freebridge’s services can be thoroughly scrutinised. These meetings are a key part of our engagement strategy, where Service Champions can openly discuss issues and suggest improvements based on customer experiences. This is critical for ensuring that customer voices influence the decisions that shape the services we provide.

By working with Your Own Place, we also benefit from their proven skills in delivering actionable insights. Their structured approach to workshops and facilitation helps Freebridge not only hear customer feedback but also use it effectively to make meaningful changes. This aligns perfectly with our aim to close the loop and communicate back to customers that their views have been taken seriously, directly impacting improvements in their homes and local communities.

Their support enhances our ability to build trust and transparency, ensuring that customer
engagement at Freebridge isn’t just a process, but a partnership where customers can see the real impact of their involvement. This approach, underpinned by Your Own Place’s facilitation, helps us meet the vision of ensuring every customer feels valued, respected, and involved in shaping the services they receive.

Your Own Place is blushing – but we have to ask, why would you recommend Your Own Place?

I would recommend Your Own Place because they offer unbiased, expert facilitation in housing and tenancy-related matters. Their independent approach ensures that customer feedback is gathered in a transparent and unfiltered way, which is essential for initiatives like myFreebridge and the Service Champions programme.

By involving independent facilitators, you create a safe, neutral environment where customers feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions. This results in more authentic insights and helps identify real issues and opportunities for improvement. Your Own Place excels at listening to a wide range of voices, capturing different perspectives, and feeding these back in a way that drives meaningful change.

Their focus on skills development, empowerment, and preventing housing challenges aligns well with Freebridge’s goals of improving services and strengthening community relationships. Working with an organisation like Your Own Place demonstrates a clear commitment to transparency, trust, and genuine customer engagement.

Thank you for sharing your background, aims and experience of working with us. Your passion and expertise is so evident in your answers – What would your top tip be for championing customer/tenant voice?
My top tip for championing customer or tenant voice is to be creative, inclusive, and balanced:
– Think outside the box with your approach to engage people in meaningful ways.
– Listen widely to capture diverse perspectives and build a 360-degree understanding.
– Stay impartial and identify common themes (that golden thread!) to shape solutions that truly reflect the voices you’ve heard.
This way, you ensure every voice has the power to influence positive change!

You didn’t think we’d forgotten to address the zombie apocalypse, did you? Rebecca, we simply must know: What three items would you want in your backpack in a zombie apocalypse?
Sixpence (my cat), my slingshot and my favourite chocolate truffles
Priorities – chocolate is essential!

It was great to catch up with Rebecca and hear about her experience. If you’d like to connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn.“

Rebecca (top left) and five Service Champions at Freebridge’s last Service Champions’ Forum of the year.

If you’d like to find out more about our Tenant Engagement offer, click here or get in touch with Zoe at zoe@yourownplace.org.uk

Introducing Zoe, new CEO of Your Own Place

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We’re so excited to give an official Your Own Place welcome to Zoe Webb – our new CEO! 

Emily, a facilitator at Your Own Place, met with Zoe at one of the team’s favourite haunts, The Cherry Leaf Cafe, to grill her with some interview questions. Zoe answered some classic Your Own Place workshop questions and shared a bit more about her background and what attracted her to Your Own Place.

“I met with Zoe at the Cherry Leaf – diet coke for me, hot chocolate for Zoe – and her enthusiastic energy was immediately clear. She also insisted on hearing my answers to the questions too so that we could both get to know each other! 

We kicked off with some of our go-to entryboard questions – we use these at the start of workshops as an icebreaker and something to chat about while waiting for everyone to arrive.

What is your favourite pizza topping?

At the moment, pepperoni is my go to. My favourite changes – sometimes it’s prawns, or mushrooms. The best pizza I’ve ever had was Hoisin duck!

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I have lots of countries on my travelling list. At the top is Japan – there are so many reasons Japan interests me – the culture, the people, the traditions, the Cherry Blossoms! And, of course, the food. I have to read everything before I go and plan it so I don’t miss anything.

If you were a plant, what would you be?

I thought about this for a long time. I’d be a sedum. [picture me looking on, not knowing what a sedum is] It’s a succulent – a ground coverer. They spread quickly and they flower – I relate to sedum as a hardy perennial and an all rounder!

I went on to ask Zoe some quickfire need-to-knows:

  • Coffee order: Americano
  • Breakfast item of choice: Normal day – fruit and yoghurt, treat – pecan plait or sourdough avocado
  • Fave biscuit: Dark chocolate ginger (borders)
  • Fun fact: When I was 13, my friend taught me a secret language that I can still speak!

And next, I learned about Zoe’s background – and the incredible breadth of her experience!

Tell us a bit about your background

I’ve been working in the housing and homeless prevention field for thirty years. During that time I’ve worked across local authorities, the voluntary sector, housing associations and my most recent role was working in a specialist supported housing provider. I’ve worked in a variety of roles – I’ve been an advisor, a community-based support worker, I’ve established a rough sleeper team for a local authority. I’ve also worked on really exciting projects for the Ministry of Justice – I feel really privileged to have been involved in some really innovative projects. Most recently, I’ve worked with a specialist supported housing provider, focused on supporting single people experiencing homelessness or insecure housing. I’ve purposefully worked across the sector, to build a holistic view and understanding of housing. 

That’s incredibly impressive. What attracted you to Your Own Place?

Your Own Place’s values, the asset-based approach, working alongside people while they’re going through difficult transitions – these are all things that really attracted me to Your Own Place. I met Rebecca ten years ago, and I was really impressed by her approach, I really got it. I could see similarities with the work I’d been doing previously as a support worker in Greater Manchester. I was working on a young parents project, mainly with young women living in private rented accommodation that was insecure, unsafe and unaffordable. My focus was working with them – with them being very important – to support and equip them with the skills to be able to negotiate and improve their situation. I see that approach at Your Own Place. I see the strengths-based, asset-based approach and I’m really inspired by that.

Tell us about your passions. Why homelessness prevention?

Everyone has the right to a safe and affordable home. I’m a massive believer in homelessness prevention and a massive believer in early intervention. Insecure housing and homelessness creates trauma – trauma that prevention can avoid. If we invest in prevention, it pays dividends. I’m also passionate about people, creating space for change, creating space for discovering unknown capacity and skills within them and in their community. People have the capacity to find their own solutions, but they may not yet know they have this capacity – or they know they have but they are fighting against a system that’s not always working for them.

Thank you for sharing so much about your experience, values and passions. So…What has stood out to you about Your Own Place as a workplace so far?

The team have been incredibly welcoming. I’ve noticed how abundantly collaborative the team is – communication is excellent, they use Trello and instant messaging really effectively, and it’s so clear that everyone is really connected. This is hard to achieve in remote work [Your Own Place has hybrid and flexible working], but Your Own Place has a great handle on it! I’ve also seen the care and attention that goes into the quality of delivery. It’s very clear that I’m working with a skilled and passionate team.

What are you excited about at Your Own Place?

I’m excited to meet our existing partners and new partners. I’m excited about expanding our reach to prevent homelessness and embedding a collaborative approach to preventing homelessness. I’m also really excited for more and more people to see that what we do at Your Own Place works!

What would you like to say to potential business partners thinking about working with Your Own Place?

First and foremost: You won’t regret it! We’ve got a tried, trusted and successful model; our impact is demonstrated. Come and see us, come and talk to us! Prevention is a wide remit, and I think we can apply our approach across systems – so let’s explore it and contribute towards ending homelessness.

And finally, we simply must know: What three items would you want in your backpack in a zombie apocalypse?

Water, food, weapon [I pressed here for what exact weapon…] …a chainsaw!

An excellently gory and effective weapon chosen to take on zombies!

I had a wonderful time meeting with Zoe and grilling her. I can really see how her vast experience, her enthusiasm and innovative thinking, her passion are all going to be incredible assets to the leadership of Your Own Place.“

Connect with Zoe on LinkedIn

So that’s a wrap

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Waking up at 5am, my immovable exercise hour at 6am, probably a quality coffee in the sunshine (the past is always sunny) and then the usual day of team support, planning a workshop of some kind, signing off a report, doing some finance, troubleshooting and meeting a potential customer, likely after the fifth chasing email.

This day-in-my life feels like the optimal day during my time at Your Own Place.  This was likely somewhere around 2018 .  The recently enlarged team felt settled, I had moved into Norwich, making my work-life balance a lot simpler, there was an excellent coffee shop on the corner near the office and we had the novelty of a base.  It was pre-Covid and post the three-year-hump when lots of Community Interest Companies fail.  The team had grown, but not so much that I was constantly worried about money – every year had seen a surplus.  Something else that changed during and since Covid.

At some point in the second half of my decade, something shifted.  With Covid, the cost of living crisis and the catching up of the austerity years, the financial outlook felt bleak.  Whilst our own fortunes had not radically altered, the backdrop undeniably had.

This final post isn’t about doom and gloom.  Quite the opposite.  It’s about the journey you go on over ten years in social business.  Because at some point something changed for me too. Not for good or for ill, but just different.  Something I see when I look back at my social media output, my email approaches and how I conducted myself. 

Having created Your Own Place from a deep sense of injustice that some people, through no fault of their own are more likely to become homeless than others, the focus of my time, the podcasts I listened to, the articles I read and my broader interests, shifted not away from social justice, rather towards leadership as well.

Effectively a self-employed one-woman band for the first 18 months of Your Own Place’s life, as the organisation grew in size, ambition, quality as well as complexity, I needed to up my leadership game.  This hadn’t been in the plan. With a long way still to go and to learn, I’d like to think I’ve done okay.  I’ve made a gazillion mistakes, but in the impact language I love so much, there’s no counterfactual.  We don’t know what would have happened if I’d done something different/nothing.

That Your Own Place has proved me to be competent and more than competent not just in delivering workshops (it was this skill that led to our model), but in creating profit and loss accounts, public speaking, pitching, managing impact, making decisions, being resilient and tenacious, leading a strategy and a team and influencing and inspiring others is a chance revelation.  And this is exactly why we exist in the first place.  That it’s chance and good luck that I got those opportunities.  And it’s chance and bad luck that others don’t. 

So as I enter my last two weeks, the team is strong, we’re recruiting in Colchester and this year looks very likely to be our best yet financially, I find myself brimming with gratitude.  Brimming with gratitude for the person that Your Own Place has enabled me to become and with hope that others get their opportunities too. I am grateful for every single interaction, connection, opportunity and kindness shown to me .  Please continue to show it to Zoe, our new CEO, our team and everyone you work with or support. You never know what someone can become.

See you on the other side.