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

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

“If you treasure it, measure it”

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Emily is a full-time facilitator at Your Own Place. She joined the company in the post-Covid haze of April 2021.

“This week it’s been confirmed for me that it isn’t all an elaborate prank. Rebecca White, CEO and Founder of Your Own Place CIC is moving on to pastures new.

As a team we’ve grappled with how to say goodbye in a way that is worthy of Rebecca. As a team, it feels necessary to document this somehow, but we are finding it so hard to put into words the impact that she has had on each of us.

I love the culture at Your Own Place – and I’m not shy about saying this! A few weeks ago, we gathered to discuss the transition of Rebecca leaving. We planned how we would support each other – because big change is hard. We’ll continue to make time for each other, bring our feelings to our weekly sharing and listening time, continue to meet for some work-free time during the week. 

What also happened at this CEO Transition planning meeting: we were asked how we felt when we found out that Rebecca was leaving.

One of my colleagues said that she saw all the stages of grief quickly pass over my face. We laughed about this – because it was true that I felt that way, and because we can.

Rebecca is an icon, a true leader, a role model – and I can identify quotes to show some of the characteristics of her leadership.

“Let’s not let perfection be the enemy of the good”

Rebecca embraces the Review Cycle wholeheartedly, and because of this, it is embedded in Your Own Place. This approach of using our experience and resources to create the best we can, reviewing, making it better, reviewing, making it better, helps us all to find a point where we’ve done enough. We know we will improve every time we revisit – and there’s no such thing as perfect.

“This is the first time I’ve been CEO of a social enterprise”

I think this is equalising – reminding us all that it’s her chosen passion and also that we don’t always know how it will work or what will happen, but that first times can go really well. It’s been meant as a way of encouraging a try it and see what happens approach.

“Well done this week” and “Thank you”

Acknowledgement and appreciation of the work we do – when they feel truly genuine, are so motivating.

I could continue – I could talk about the values that are instilled from day one, the limitless support, the never-too-busy to check a document approach, the listening – but apparently I have other work to do today!

Rebecca, I want to say thank you from all the team, past and present, for creating such a welcoming and values-based environment in which we thrive and have thrived. We are all wishing you peace, joy and rest. And we can’t wait to see what you do next!”

When’s a good time for a new plan?

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When’s a good time for a new plan?

No matter what you’re doing, you need a detailed plan to make things happen. Or so we often think. In a post Covid19 world it’s hard to imagine a worse time to make a plan for big changes to our lives. How can we possibly plan in this vacuum?

Setting up Your Own Place in 2013 occurred during a blur of personal tragedy and a need for something new. What I didn’t recognise at the time is that my life needed something new and not just my career. This amount of change probably required a plan.

This blog explores this supposed need for a detailed plan and the timing for change.

Way back when Your Own Place was just a glimmer in my eye, some of the best advice I received was not to wait until everything was perfect before starting something new and brave. As someone who feeds on control, this was hard to believe and harder to implement. Looking back it’s unclear when the decision was made to start a social enterprise, how or exactly why.

Following two decades of agonising illness that did untold harm to my family, my mum died quietly in 2013, six months before Your Own Place was incorporated as a Community Interest Company. It’s easy to see this as something planned or as a birth following a death. It wasn’t. It had been gestating a while. By chance I had told just enough people about the ‘plan’ to leave my secure job at the council and so to subliminally hold me to account. On reflection this was an important achievement, as I wasn’t even ready to hold myself to account. The truth is, Children’s Services, my employer at the time, was in such turmoil that no-one had the wherewithal to convince me to stay. Or, the alternative truth is that it appeared so certain that I was leaving, no-one tried. Either way, I’d have given anything to be persuaded to stay – because there was no plan – detailed or otherwise. This remained the case until the last year.

What was also unfolding at this time was the collapse of my relationship, a relationship that had started in 1999, shortly after leaving university. A chance encounter with an old school friend, long before I admitted to myself my relationship was over, warned against entering into self-employment (as company directors are treated). She informed me of this, ruefully from personal experience it turned out, as we made tea in the kitchen at County Hall. I learnt that as a single self-employed person I’d have little chance of getting a mortgage. It didn’t seem overly relevant as I wasn’t really leaving my job or my relationship was I?

It all started to unravel over the coming months.

Fifteen more months passed of half-hearted work on the enterprise whilst working equally half-heartedly at the council. Everything came to a head in late 2014 and early 2015. I felt pushed out of a job I wasn’t ready to leave to lead an enterprise I wasn’t ready to run and a relationship that I should have already left. And I still didn’t have a plan.

Working full-time for Your Own Place in early 2015, my 18 year relationship finally collapsed nine months later. Sure enough, I lost everything. I lost my home, my sense of self, half my household income, most of my support network and had little chance of getting the stability of another mortgage and a home.

So this would have definitely been the time for a plan. Sadly not yet. I was bereft. I pitied myself, shamed myself, cried every day for exactly a year, hid away in crappy damp rented accommodation on a marsh and ruptured my calf muscle in the middle of it all. Naturally this left me more isolated than ever. I’d never less wanted a plan.

And yet Your Own Place began to get a name for itself, a good reputation, thrive even. We received some high profile funding and our first member of staff. I worked hard. Really hard. Not always focussed or productively, but always hard. What else had I to do if I was going to avoid sinking deeper into depression and a kind of self harm? The kind that involves living on a marsh in the middle of nowhere.

When was the corner turned and a better plan developed?

That people regard me as this ‘lucky’, smiley, successful and passionate person feels pretty at odd with my daily life. It’s often frustrating. It feels far from my truth and as though people are making assumptions about who I am. As so many, I’m a person that obscures a multitude of denials about my strengths, my ability to do detail, my worthiness to have the best job in the world and my ability to see anything through – including to follow and be accountable to a plan. I’ve never planned because hitherto I’ve not really had to. For one reason or another I’ve always believed that I can probably wing it. The stuff of middle class self-belief and (penniless) privilege – and a wonderful contradiction of the above-described imposter syndrome.

Winging it is fine if there’s just you. Wonderfully, gratefully and objectively, the difference now is that it’s no longer just me. The responsibility I have is to my team who put unfathomable faith in me. And greater still, the people we support who trust us.

Another chance conversation linked me up with a mortgage broker. Moving into my little home in Norwich, whilst on crutches, was a wonderful moment. As CEO of an enterprise that aims to end the indignity of homelessness, it was a small insight into the self-esteem, self-worth and security that comes of having your own place.

It’s not that I’m not worth having a good plan for you’ll understand, but being seen to fail is not an option. You can’t fail if there was never a plan in the first place. In addition, winging it has undoubtedly brought unexpected benefits through the people I’ve met, opportunities I’ve taken and strengths and resilience I have developed.

Today I have a plan and I’m proud to articulate it to you, the team and our incredible new Board. We will prevent homelessness. We will develop a unique and impactful model to do so and take it to ten cities in England and we will make a difference to 1000s of lives.

To answer the question, when’s a good time, the answer is probably now! Neither the plan nor the situation have to be detailed or perfect. You just have to start, be prepared to reflect and learn, hold yourself accountable and keep moving forward.