Welcome to Leadership Worth Sharing, a podcast in which ACEVO chief executive Jane Ide chats with civil society leaders about their professional experiences, challenges, wellbeing, and their journeys in the sector.
In this episode, Jane talks to Charlotte Hill, chief exec of The Felix Project. They talk about keeping volunteers engaged and motivated, hopes for the new government, and what fundraising events and keeping your fitness levels up have in common.
Transcript
Jane Ide
So, Charlotte, welcome to our podcast. It’s lovely to spend this time with you. You and I’ve met more than once. And and I had a lovely visit to your project, I think probably about 18 months ago, which perhaps we’ll touch on a little bit, but for the benefit of everybody listening, can you just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about the work that you do, the organisation you run and and what it’s like being the Chief Exec of The Felix Project.
Charlotte Hill
Thank you, Jane, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I feel honored, honored and privileged to be on the ACEVO podcast. And I am Charlotte Hill, I am the chief executive of the Felix project. And for those who don’t know, the Felix project, we rescue surplus food, we sort that in our warehouses or cook it in our kitchen. And then we distribute it out to about 1100 charities all across London, we are London based, we are inside the M 25. And we did about 32 million meals last year, out of surplus food to communities most in need. It is the most awesome job. I know, I’m sure every chief executive you speak to think they’ve got the best job in the world. And I’m one of them. I’m one of them who thinks I’ve got the best job in the world. But yeah, it’s a fascinating and brilliant organization. And we did that with 15,000 volunteers last year. And so very much an organization by Londoners for Londoners. And those 15,000 volunteers are just incredible. They help us shift these millions of meals out to communities in need. So that’s a bit about us.
Jane Ide
Tell us a little bit more. Where does the Felix project come from? Because I know from when I came and visited, there was a strong sense of its roots.
Charlotte Hill
There is. We are only eight years old. We’re a very young organization. I say this is a person. I’ve been a Chief Exec of a couple of other organizations before, one was 100 years old when I took over and this organization was five when I joined it. So very young organization, Felix is baked into us. So there was a young man called Felix who was 14. And he was really passionate about both food waste and food insecurity. And he was a campaigner, and he played football against young boys who hadn’t eaten and he was from a privileged background. And he thought this was absolutely awful. And so as a young man, this was something he really really cared about. And very sadly, he died very suddenly from meningitis, whilst away on a school trip, absolutely horrific age 14. And his amazing parents, Justin and Jane, who are still on my board now, thought rather than do something about meningitis, which is what he died of, they thought what would be the impact Felix would have wanted to have in the world had he lived. And so they set up the Felix project in his name. And so our logo that is on every van that drives around London, we’ve got now 60 vans that drive around London, and he’s on, you know, I wear proudly all the time voluntarily know what makes me wear it. And it’s actually his last ever signature in his last Mother’s Day card to his mom, which every single time even though I tell this story every single day, as a mom of two still gives me goosebumps because I think how incredible out of such tragedy to do something so incredibly positive. And it started literally as a tiny little project in West London rescuing surplus food from local shops and giving it out to community organizations. And now as I said, we have a fleet of 60 vehicles that do that drive, our food all over London, we have four warehouses in the four corners of London, we’re Felix’s kitchen, which cooks 5000 meals a day out of surplus food, we’ve just opened something called Felix’s multibank, where we’re rescuing other surplus items. We do it to 1200 community organizations, who now rely on Felix food to deliver amazing social impact when their domestic violence shelters or homeless shelters or food banks, or you name it, we’ve become a real part of the infrastructure for the voluntary sector in London, all off the back of two incredible parents who thought goodness, I want to do some good in the name of a horrible tragedy of losing our child. So we always say that we’re like a world class logistics company, but with a massive heart. And for me, the Felix magic which is sprinkled over everything we do is because we do it in the name of this amazing young man.
Jane Ide
It’s an incredibly impactful story and the way you talk about it is so powerful. And you’re right, very emotional. I get the goosebumps as well. And I recognize that and one of the thoughts that’s going through my mind as I’m listening to you is there will be many people listening to this certainly many people in the sector who are very familiar with the phrase founder syndrome. And it isn’t always the easiest situation to be in to be running a charity that’s been founded, particularly in such emotional circumstances. But it sounds very much as though somehow at the Felix Project, you’ve cracked that. So I’m just wondering what your reflections on that might be. How is it come to be that this has been such a powerful story compared to some that we hear where it starts with great intent, but challenges shall we say arise along the way.
Charlotte Hill
Yeah. And I was really nervous about it. I’ve got to be honest, when I applied for this job, a big part of the process of being interviewed for this was me also, genuinely interviewing Justin and Jane to be like, do you really want a chief executive who’s going to come in and run this as a, you know, a really brilliantly run organization. But that will have very clear boundaries between governance and executive. And you know, I’ve been, I’d run two other organizations before. And I know, I know, when you’ve got a young organization, of course, you’ve got trustees who have been very much part of the setup, and the doing and all of those things. And so I was really clear, I wanted to make sure they genuinely did want me to come in and run it. And they did. And they have been true to their word, they have been absolutely fantastic, and really trusting me to run their organization. And I’m really conscious, you know, they did set it up, it has gotten very personal is a family endeavor, but they also want it to be run brilliantly. I genuinely mean this, I could not have better advocates for our work.
Jane Ide
This is a really powerful example, isn’t it of the impact that can be had, when for want of a better way of putting when people set aside their personal ego, their personal feelings, their personal priorities, and actually say, what matters is the legacy and the impact. And it’s, it’s an incredibly powerful story of that. And you mentioned, you know, being effectively a huge logistics operation, when you went into the role into this toddler organisation. What, apart from creating that very clear boundary around governance, what were your priorities? What did you know you were taking on? And what did you take on that you didn’t know you were taking on? If you know what I mean?
Charlotte Hill
It’s the age old thing, isn’t it? When you become a chief executive, and you think goodness, when I lift up the stones, what am I going to find? Actually, I knew it was lovely coming to this organization, because it was very clear that this was an organization because of COVID. I came in during COVID. But I wasn’t here for the first lockdown. I joined, I joined at the end end of 2020 effectively. It was an organization that had grown so quickly. So quickly, you know, we’ve gone from being a smallish startup in COVID, because of all of the demand and need for food, and all of the things we all know about. The organization had, you know, quadrupled in size, basically. So it was very clear. This was an organization that had grown very fast, but that needed to kind of have systems and structures and processes and all of those things built around it. So we framed the whole of the first year as brilliant basics, basically, which was how do we make sure this organization is growing up? It’s got all of those things in place. And so I was in a lucky position to be able to recruit a senior leadership team basically, as coming in as a new chief executive. Really, yeah, look at how the next kind of period of the Felix project was going to be after that first period, came in a great guy called Mark Kern had been chief executive before me, he had gone on to run Lord’s Taverners. And he done a fantastic job. You know, the organization was in great health in lots and lots of ways. But it also, like every other organization had an absolutely exhausted workforce, who had for the last year worked like crazy, because it had basically been an emergency response organization. You know, everybody had been a key worker at Felix. During the pandemic. Yeah, it was a lot of it was about goodness, how do we build the systems and processes and structures and so on, but also rejuvenate an exhausted workforce, was a lot of what the kind of job was coming in. Honestly, and I love I’ve always been fortunate to love the jobs I’ve done, I love this job, absolutely love it, there is something really energizing about being in an organization in a time when the world could feel pretty depressing. At the moment, it could feel pretty bleak out there. And you know, we’re if I look to one side of my organization, we’re facing a massive environmental climate change crisis, of which food waste is a massive contributor. If I looked at the other side of my organization, you’ve got more and more and more people living in food insecurity and poverty and challenge and all of those things. You could see a world in which this could feel like a very bleak place. But actually, it’s the most amazing empowering positive can do place because people come here and feel like they’re doing something about it. People come here, which is why our volunteer numbers have gone up and up and up and people want to come back and volunteer their time here is because you leave a shift at the Felix project. First of all, the music is awesome, which helps, like it’s a bang in place to be because the music’s great. Exactly but you leave a shift at the Felix project, feeling like you’ve made a difference. Food has not been wasted that day. That would have been otherwise. People are going to eat that day that wouldn’t do otherwise. And you feel physically tired. I was laughing because I just joined this talking to you. I’m here in my hi viz with my steel toed boots on and I choose to be in our depots and kitchens and things all the time because there is a pace and an energy and an optimism and a yeah, there’s something about it that makes you feel great about the world, even in a world that feels bleak and dark and horrible sometimes. So it’s a very energetic forward looking, engaging place to be, which yeah, in the current context of the world, it’s a lovely, it’s a lovely job to have.
Jane Ide
It certainly is. And I think I want to pick up with you about your volunteering model, because, again, having had the opportunity to come and actually visit the project, I was very struck, firstly, by the atmosphere and the number of people you had working around the place, but also that you have perhaps a rather different approach to volunteering than is more common these days in the sector. So perhaps just talk us through that a little bit.
Charlotte Hill
Yeah. So we basically, volunteers at the Felix project are like, totally essential to what we do. So it isn’t like some other charity jobs I’ve done. Sometimes, like group volunteering, or corporate volunteering, or however you frame it is a kind of a nice to have, where corporates are coming to do things on the side, actually, I think because our whole model volunteers are a fundamental part of what we do, there’s something in that they just are part of the team. So you might be in one of my warehouses. Now I’m out in our East London depo, where I’m sitting here, and I just showed a group of people around this morning, and it would be very hard for them to tell who was a volunteer and who was a colleague. So we have about 200 colleagues and about 15,000 volunteers, but some of those volunteers come six days a week, you know, they are very, very much part of the kind of Felix family. But some of them are group volunteers who so again, where I’m sitting now, in Poplar, it’s a 15 minute walk from Canary Wharf. So those groups in those businesses in those tall towers can send groups over here to come and do a day’s work. And it’s very easy, it’s very accessible. But I think the other thing is, is people can just book on to our system, and you don’t have to commit to doing the same day every week. Or it’s you can literally just come for one shift, or you could come for two shifts a year. Or you can come every day, or you can it’s a completely flexible volunteering offer. But the other thing is, is we can take large groups of volunteers, which again, is something that lots of charities really struggle with. But it does mean we’re very sticky as an organization. Corporates, generally don’t just come and volunteer once their teams come and they love it, you can come with a team of 30 and volunteer and be in the kitchen or be in the warehouse, you do it as a group. So it’s a great team building activity, you feel tired at the end of the day, because you physically worked, there is a very physical interaction. It’s great fun, and it’s, it’s easy to come and do for half a day or a day or whatever you want to do. So I think I think all of those things combined. And it is also very much you know, people love the tangibility of the impact. They know that, you know, they leave at the end, at the end of each volunteer shift we tell them how many people are going to eat as a result of what they’ve done that that day or that half day. There’s something very tangible about that. So yeah, it’s an it’s a very, it’s a very different volunteering offer, both for groups and corporates as well as individuals because of its flexibility and all of these different things. So yeah, we have bucked the kind of national trend, our volunteer numbers grow year on year.
Jane Ide
And that was one of the things I found fascinating because, as you say, bucking the trend in terms of the numbers, and bucking that trend in terms of so many charities and quite rightly saying, we really don’t want the corporate team turning up and painting some walls for us. What we actually need is people who will lend their skills in accountancy or marketing or whatever it is, it might be. So I find I find it absolutely fascinating. And I can see the value and the the you know, having been in that warehouse with you and in that operation, absolutely the energy around it. And especially for those of us that do spend our lives sitting in front of screens, let’s just go do something.
Charlotte Hill
Exactly. And so many of our volunteers say that actually, that big part of the reason they volunteer… So I was just chatting actually to Sal, who’s one of our volunteers downstairs, and she says basically, she does this instead of going to the gym, because it’s very physical. you’re lugging big ol bags of potatoes around and things like basically Sal wouldn’t mind me saying this. She’s a woman who’s now retired from full time work. And she doesn’t get bingo wings, because she comes to the Felix project. Like basically, it is a very physical thing. It is like going to the gym.
Jane Ide
And I remember you saying to me, you don’t have to do the sort of safeguarding checks on someone that’s going to peel a potato.
Charlotte Hill
It’s true. Health and safety and food safety. The things that keep me awake at night. Having been a chief executive who’s always run youth organizations before, safeguarding was the thing that used to keep me awake at night. And so I have traded safeguarding for health and safety and food safety, but you’re right. Obviously, we have to keep people safe and we have to keep people you know, all of those things, but we don’t have the same safeguarding issues that you have when you’re bringing in groups of volunteers into a children, young people setting. It’s a very different profile of, of how what you can enable people to do.
Jane Ide
But the other thing that absolutely blew my mind when I came to visit, and I have quoted this many times, so I’m interested to just see if I really understood you correctly. Because I remember standing outside in the yard, and we were talking about the fact that it is that symbiosis between people who desperately need food, and this massive issue of food waste. And that bit, I could see absolutely logically, but I remember you pointing at a rapid delivery business across the yard. And you said to me, the only, the only reason that industry can exist and its business model can work is because there are food banks and organizations like Felix that will take that surplus food from them, because that’s how their business model works. And I have in the last 18 months, I have been trying to compute that over and over again, that there is a fundamental, a vested interest almost for those businesses, in keeping people in food poverty, if that’s not making too much of a…
Charlotte Hill
Basically, their business model relies on surplus. Because now we expect to be able to go on to an app and order something to be with us in 20 minutes, that whole business model is therefore based on them having more than they need to then be able to be meet that demand. And therefore, because of particularly when it’s food, and this is where I think food is different from other, you know, commodities, it’s got a shelf life, therefore, there is always going to be surplus in that system, because we expect instant things now, and therefore, those organizations being able to know that, first of all, we are a good and agile partner. So we’ll go and pick things up as they need them picked up and so on. But also we will make sure we do social good with that food, that’s a much better thing for them to report to their shareholders with their ESG reporting, than there being food waste. So actually, what we’re able to provide the loads of our food supply partners is a really good robust reporting methods, it says Actually, yes, there may be some surplus in our business model. But that surplus is actually going to have a massive social and positive social impact, I think means that those business models where there is surplus, at least got a very good story to tell about what you know, the social impact that that surface is able to do. Alongside that, we make sure we are a genuine partner with those organizations. So we don’t just take their food, we get their colleagues to come and volunteer, we ask them to do PR to let people know about what we’re doing. And ideally, we asked him for funding. So our kinds of partnerships is always saying, can we get those four things from a partner. And generally by doing that, that one by being very, very good at our job, and how we collect the food and how responsive we are, but also by making sure their colleagues have an absolutely amazing experience volunteering with us. Again, we’re very sticky, because why wouldn’t they want to carry on working with us and we get baked into their kind of the reasons why people love working at those organizations is because they get to come and volunteer at the Felix project. It makes them proud to be part of an organization that’s part of our ecosystem. So there’s win wins for them as well.
Jane Ide
But the other thing as well, that’s going through my mind is, there are parts of our sector, and I think the food poverty sector is absolutely forefront of this, where actually people like you who are running these organizations, you really want to be put out of business, you don’t want there to be the need.
Charlotte Hill
On both fronts, there’s in that we want there to be we don’t want there to be so much surplus food or food waste. So our mission or our vision is of a London where no good food is wasted and no Londoner goes hungry. Now, on both fronts, it’s actually we want to see food waste reducing, and we don’t want to see people going hungry. Now whilst there is surplus food, we want to make sure that surplus food is getting to people in need. But absolutely the kind of goal on both sides is that both are reducing. We think we are rescuing about 8% of the food we could be rescuing just to give you a sense of the scale of the surplus. And that’s very different at different parts of the food supply chain. And, you know, in London alone, we’re doing, you know, about 35 million meals this year, we think the need is about 160 million meals to give you a sense we’re a long way off both. But absolutely on both sides. We want there not to be surplus food and we want there not to be people who need that food.
Jane Ide
And how does that impact… I’m going to bring it back more now I suppose to you personally as a leader and leading this organization. How does that inform your strategic thinking, your strategic planning the way you lead your organization forward?
Charlotte Hill
Yeah, we’re literally just about to our kind of strategic period comes to an end at the end of this year and actually the meeting I was just in before this is kicking off our kind of strategy process but very much to those points, which is, for example, we’re going to be doing a big piece of work around where our food goes. So those 1100 community organizations that we distribute food to, we have about 672, I say about, I know that, on our waiting lis at the moment of organizations we can’t provide food to. And therefore, there is clearly something around you know, how we make the decisions about which organizations get our food. And for us, it being organizations that aren’t just going to feed people for six hours, and they’re going to need food again. But it being organizations who are providing those wraparound services and support that are supporting people out of poverty, or supporting people out of situations of domestic violence, or whatever. So effectively, our food is a bit like being a funder, we’re effectively funding an organization with food, which means they can spend the money they would have spent on on food on an additional worker that support someone with their employability skills, or so on. So effectively, we want our food to have a big multiplier effect in terms of the social impact it enables the community organization to have. So for me, the magic really is the community organization. It’s that local grassroots community organization who knows exactly what their community needs, who knows exactly what the support is, how can we effectively help empower and support that organization to be able to do even more, that is tackling the longer term issues that that community is facing. And we just give them the we give them the power of food. But we want to do that as a long term trusted partner in the same way that any one of us would want to have a relationship with a funder that you know you can rely on that you know is going to turn up every day that you know is going to be there year after year. Those are the kinds of long term relationships we want to have with our London community partners. But very much part of the question we’re thinking about and part of the strategy is, where can where can our food have the greatest social impact so that it is absolutely, hopefully helping reduce the wider impact, but we’re very clear and I talked to Emma at Trussell about this all the time. You know, Emma has very intentionally ensured that Trussell trust is an anti poverty charity now, is not about they’re not in the food space, she very much tries to say we’re not in the food sector, we are an anti poverty charity. And that’s a very, that’s a very different position as an organization. So it’s yeah, it’s really interesting. When you think about the kind of things you all aren’t there to do, us as a kind of logistics operation in London that effectively is powering the voluntary sector. For me, it’s more around where that food goes, that can have the biggest social impact that then helps people out of whatever challenging situation they’re in is the big the big question. Sadly, at the moment, there is, yeah, for lots and lots of different reasons, a lot of surplus of lots of different things on the other side. And there are big challenges around our food system in lots of other forms.
Jane Ide
And I find it fascinating because I think one of the one of the really interesting conversations that I’m hearing a lot in certain parts of our membership, many of our members are head down just trying to keep the boat afloat, obviously. And we recognize that, but those that are perhaps got a little bit more headspace, there’s some really interesting conversations emerging around systems leadership about actually your, your charity might be there to do X, but it can only really achieve x if y and Zed are also being tackled, and what are the root causes of the issue? So you know, it’s about poverty, it’s about exclusion. It’s about disadvantage, about those sorts of things, and how do we come together as individual organizations, leaders of individual organizations with that expertise and that knowledge and what strikes me listening to while you’re talking, I have this picture in my mind, of a sort of a, I don’t know, one of those maps where you are, you’re at the hub, you are literally a hub, and a connector between the food businesses generating all that food waste, the community organization, supporting people in need, the different aspects of all of this ecosystem, and you are, you are part of that ecosystem. But you’re also a very active contributor to the to the benefit created within that ecosystem, which is, which is, is really quite striking.
Charlotte Hill
Yeah, it is. And it’s really interesting, because actually, a lot of the organizations where our food goes, it isn’t necessarily about people who are hungry. Sometimes it’s people who are lonely, people who are isolated, people who are elderly, people who are having mental health challenges, people, you know, there’s there’s all sorts of different social impacts that our food is supporting. We don’t ever want to be too prescriptive because actually, our local community organizations know what their communities need. You know, it’s not for us to tell them where the food can have the most power and impact, they will know. And for some of them over the years, they’ve been getting Felix food, they use that food for very different things at very different times depending on what their community needs. Sometimes it’s about employability, sometimes it’s around emergency food aid. Sometimes it’s around, you know, all sorts of different hooks. It’s used for education, whatever it is, what is the common thread is that food is an amazing convener, food for lots of different reasons, and sadly, sometimes it is absolutely around poverty, but sometimes it’s other things. Food brings people together. And there is a real power to food as a common as a common thing as well. We all need everybody understands the currency of food. So yeah, there’s lots of different ways that different community organizations use Felix food, which is also part of the kind of yeah, power of it almost as a funder. You know, different organizations will use it differently. But lots of organizations need it.
Jane Ide
There’s real sense of humaneness at the heart of that, I think, for me, it is it is because the act of breaking bread together, can’t imagine the there’s a festival or a celebration or a you know, religious event that doesn’t involve food in some way, shape, or form. It is so important. It’s so powerful. But I’m going to move us on a little bit. Because, you know, I’m really interested to know more about your own leadership journey. And I think one of the things I’ve seen from reading a little bit of your bio is I believe you worked in Australia, and in the civil society in Australia, what did you see there that was different to what you see here? What did you learn from that what tell us a little bit more about your, your own leadership journey.
Charlotte Hill
So I had a couple of years overseas, some of it in Southeast Asia, my husband grew up in Australia, so he’s got an Aussie passport. So we were able to spend a bit of time over there. And then some of it in South America. And this is basically just because I am a person who learns by doing and therefore calving, like before, we were gonna settle down and be proper grownups we were like, Why don’t we go and just do our jobs in some other bits of the world. And it was amazing. It was it was a fascinating, I mean, I’m showing my age, it was a long time ago now. But I had worked in Westminster, under the Blair and Brown governments. And in my 20s, basically, it was fascinating going to Australia because it was a bit like they were they were also having a big change of government over there, having had a Conservative government for a long, long time, they then just got a newly elected Labour government when I got to Australia. So it was very similar to the kind of 97 period when I’ve worked in Whitehall. And so it was a bit like stepping back in time, actually, because a lot of the stuff that I’d seen happened between government and the third sector, when we had kind of New Labour coming in here was happening in Australia. So it was really interesting just to see a sector trying to work with the government in a in a different context, but with some real similarities. As is always the way you learn a huge amount about both the challenge, the kind of differences and similarities when you’re in a different setting. And I’m always struck, you know, whether I’m sitting on a trustee board, or being a chief executive, or whatever, or whether I’m working with a Chief Exec of a food industry, you know, business or whatever, there’s a huge amount of commonality of the challenges we all face, no matter where you are, and whether those are challenges around how you deal with the board or around people issues, or around volunteers, or whatever it is, you know, the world is pretty similar. And the challenges you face are pretty similar. You know, wherever you are. I loved it. I absolutely loved time overseas, I hope at some stage when I haven’t got small children who need me and I’m tied to the school, the school year, I’ll get I’ll get into another stint working overseas.
Jane Ide
Somehow I won’t be at all surprised to see that happen. But you mentioned just in about being a trustee as well. And I think one of the things I’m always interested in so many leaders in our sector, in paid roles, in our sector, also take on those trustee roles, chair roles. And certainly I know from my experience, it felt quite transformational in terms of my own understanding of my role. So I’m really interested to know what do you take from being a trustee?
Charlotte Hill
I love being a trustee. And to be honest, I always think I’ve been a trustee since I’m in my 20s. And it was one of the things that massively supported me to become a chief executive actually, my understanding that I learned about the kind of cycle of you know, running a charity and governance and the difference between being a board member and and all of those different things. So I always try and have… I sit on a board of a local charity, local youth club where I live in Peckham. I absolutely love being a trustee there, partly because it means I know lots of young people where I live, get energy from being around young people, and then a national board, just come to the end literally just come to the end of nine years on the board of EFL trust. I’m a big passionate football fan. I’ve loved being part of the football community. I’ve learned so much being a trustee there for the last nine years, and I hope contributed a lot but sitting on the other side of the board table, it’s such a helpful perspective to have for me, as a chief executive, I basically always say to my chair, if any organization I’m in as a chief executive, a big part of my own personal development learning journey is me being on a board, I commit to giving the time to it, partly because I really believe in the organizations I sit on the board of, but partly because I learned something every time. But also, I have a spring in my step, being a trustee, there’s something, there is something around feeling like you’re contributing in some small way to someone else’s organization, when you know what, I know how blooming hard is to run a voluntary sector organization. Because I get it, right? You know, I am a Chief Exec of one, I understand it.
Jane Ide
I say this slightly flippantly, but I kind of have a feeling that every chief exec should be at least a trustee at least once. And every Trustee Board should have a charity leader on them. An awful lot of them don’t. And and I think that does make a big difference when you’re when you’re trying to leave the organization to have at least somebody else there on the board, who gets it. I’m just going to pick up on something that you said just now when you were talking about your journey, and before you move to Australia, and you were talking about having worked under the Blair/Brown government. And obviously, I’m not going to ask you for any anything inappropriately party political, but we are in an election year. And you do work in a in a context that is right at the forefront of some of the biggest challenges that I think we face you know, we all know that our country and our communities face right now. So I’m curious to know what what your hopes of an election year and what do you think the next government needs to really be prioritising?
Charlotte Hill
Sitting here at the Felix Project, we’re also in election day, because London mayor is being elected today, is a year of massive political change for us, because actually, the Mayor of London has a big impact on what we do as the Felix Project in London. And obviously, we’re going to have a big year, and I was thinking a year of political changes a year of opportunity, right, it means you’re going to first of all, have a lot more time and the year potentially, of a lot more politicians either in terms of what they’re going to commit to do, you know, beyond all, then what you know how you can influence them when they get into power. So I always think of it as a real opportunity to drive change. I’m a massive optimist by nature. And therefore, I always think, goodness, you know, no matter who comes in next, no matter what, we’re going to have a chance at doing something differently. And therefore, for me, particularly within the Felix project, there’s some very specific stuff that we’re hoping to see around for the food system, particularly, that we, you know, but of course, you want to feel like any new government coming in, bring some new energy. And I think that’s what this country needs at the moment, we need some new energy and new ideas and new ways of tackling some of the big knotty problem. And that’s what I guess, I hope we will see, you know, it’s a newly elected MPs who are going to come in of whatever color and bring some new ideas and new experiences and new energy into the world because goodness, it’s an amazing country. We live in a blooming amazing country. And I’m reminded of that all the time, the great, optimistic, brilliant people who come into these warehouses, and it doesn’t feel like it. At the moment, it feels like a bloomin tough place.
Jane Ide
But coming back again, just a little bit in terms of your own experience as a leader, a very experienced leader, if you were, I’m sure you do, if you were talking to somebody just coming into perhaps their first role as the chief executive or very early on in their leadership career. What do you what do you think is the one thing if you can sum it up in one thing? What do you think is the most useful lesson you would want to pass on to them?
Charlotte Hill
I’ve learned something in the last year that I wish I had learned, much earlier on, which is something called full benefit. So basically, that Navy SEALs learn something called full benefit, which is when something goes wrong, how do you make sure you squeeze every bit of learning out of it? And so I apply this it’s a very simple premise, full benefit, which is after a really, really rubbish day, and we all have them quite often. You think, goodness, how have I made sure I’ve got every ounce of learning out of that day. And so that I know that I won’t do it again. Or next time, if I’m faced with that it’ll be different and so full, but the approach of full benefit is a very optimistic way of looking at when things are awful. And so when I’ve had a really rubbish day recently, actually having that thing of going goodness, there was a lot of learning in that day wasn’t there? It’s been a quite a nice way of flipping a negative thing into a positive thing. So that is, that’s been my most recent way of trying to find yeah, positivity and learning in the most rubbish day.
Jane Ide
Are you starting to embed that in your own in your whole organization? It’s a powerful tool.
Charlotte Hill
Yeah, you know what I was laughing, me and my chief operating officer basically at least once a day, do you have the full benefit of this opportunity? Yeah. And there’s lots of other things I would say to my younger self. But actually, it’s such a powerful tool that that would be my that would be my tip to 20 year old Charlotte.
Jane Ide
I love that one. I love that one, I can see a future ACEVO workshop on full benefit, that would be a great way to get you to come and talk about. And I suppose in a way that that kind of brings us right into that space of for you as an individual. So you’ve mentioned you’ve got young children, that you love football, you are clearly full of energy and optimism and hope. So how do you… First of all, in terms of your own well being you are the leader of a pretty hefty operation, when all said and done with lots of moving parts literally, around at any time. As you said health and safety and food safety keeping you awake at night. So how do you how do you balance all of that with Charlotte? The woman, the human being? How do you how do you what do you do for yourself in keeping your own well being?
Charlotte Hill
There is actually oddly something that’s good for your well being in having a four and a six year old whilst doing a big old full on job, which I know sounds odd. But I before having my kids let work basically seep into every single bit of my life, I am definitely a workaholic. And that’s partly because I love my job, but also that there is something definitely wrong with me, I do work too much. And it actually having little children has made me way more boundaries around work, the boundaries of having small kids has made me much healthier. So I’ve always done UK wide jobs before this one. And I don’t think I’ve ever even looked at the Felix project had it not been for COVID, meaning that I was working from home, like everyone else, I basically ended up spending a lot more time with my small children than I anticipated I would be. And it made me realize goodness, for my first daughter, I missed loads of bedtime, because I was in Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland or wherever I was doing my job. And for my son who was six months old, when lockdown happened, I was there for every single bedtime. It made me think goodness, you know what, I’m gonna look for a London based job so that I can get home enough and see my kids more. And goodness, if it hadn’t been for my kids, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about the boundaries of finishing work on time. And there is something actually around you know, I’m, I make a point I walk my children to school three days a week. And I would never have thought of that had it not been for having kids. Thinking you know what, I’m not going to start work until 9:30, three days a week because actually, I’m walking my kids to school. So there is something actually it’s quite good and healthy boundaries in that. Otherwise, I like to pretend that I’m… my fitness and activity and things are I have to do them linked to challenges for the Felix project, otherwise, I don’t do them. So like, we do big things like the big half or a big stair climb or whatever, I basically have to force myself to say I’m going to do them every year. So it makes me do so. Because I’m not very good. Otherwise at being like right, I’ve got to make sure I get out on that run or something. But I get I’m very lucky, I say is the word, I get my energy from people. I’m a massive extrovert, and therefore I’m in a job that’s perfect for me because I recharge my batteries everyday because I’m in amongst lots and lots of people all day. And that gives me energy. So I guess I’m lucky that that’s the thing that recharges me.
Jane Ide
That’s brilliant. And you can literally walk down the corridor and see the impact of what’s going on. Because it makes me wonder as well, whether there’s and this is a survey we may or may not ever carry out which is, is there’s a particular health benefit to being the chief executive of a charity that does fundraising events. Every chief exec signs up for their charities marathon or hike or whatever, then, you know, perhaps there’s something. Yeah, maybe not gonna follow that… it’s just an interesting thing. And the last question that I always ask when we record our podcast, because I’m always interested, but I suspect you’ve covered an awful lot of it and it shines out from you anyway. I always want to ask leaders when I’m speaking to them, what is it that gives you hope? What is it that motivates you?
Charlotte Hill
I have, but you know what it genuinely is the people I work with. And that isn’t just my colleagues. It’s also our amazing volunteers. There is a lot of incredible, brilliant people out there. You know, we always describe our organization, we’re by Londoners is for Londoners from every walk of life from every background, every religion, there are people who come together in a melting pot of the Felix Project who genuinely want to do good in the world. And what’s not to love about that and to be inspired and energized around like a community of people who come together and do incredible things. It is an incredibly motivating and energizing thing. And of course seeing the impact we have both environmentally and socially is massively motivating. But actually, the fact that that impact is made possible by an amazing community of people who come together. I think he’s just awesome. It’s just amazing. And it is really inspiring. And it does make you see the good in the world. And I think God, what a lucky person I am to do that job.
Jane Ide
And all I can say, Charlotte, is I think you pay that forward in bucket loads. I am, I’m sitting here with the biggest smile on my face. I love talking to you. I am sure that everybody listening to this podcast will feel uplifted, motivated, energized, hopefully feel better able to cope with whatever it is that they’re having to cope with. And they’ve taken some really valuable encouragement and energy out of this conversation. It’s been an absolute joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining.
Charlotte Hill
Oh, thank you so much for inviting me and thank you ACEVO for all the amazing work you do.
