In May 2020, the ramifications of the unfolding pandemic were becoming all too apparent. Businesses were closing and employees were being furloughed, laid off or sent home to work. But the show had to go on for companies and organisations. This included the charity sector where the Irish Cancer Society was about to embark on a new five-year strategy to meet increasing demand for its services just as Covid broke.
To deliver the plan, the society had created the new position of head of strategy & innovation and former Deloitte senior manager Anne Byrne found herself stepping into this new role just as Ireland went into lockdown.
“Up to joining the Irish Cancer Society, my career had been in advisory roles, first in IR/HR [industrial relations/human resources] with Ibec and then in Deloitte’s public service practice. So, I knew the new role was a little outside my comfort zone and was going to challenge me to ‘do’ things myself rather than advising others on what they might do,” she says.
“What attracted me to the position was ... that the job description seemed to be a perfect fusion of my skills and interests. I liked the fact that it was a completely new role, which would present its own challenges, while it was also an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution.
“Covid had thrown everything for a loop but the society wanted to push ahead with rolling out the strategy and the way things turned out, I subsequently took on responsibility for the people function within the organisation as well,” Byrne says. “This made perfect sense as strategy and people are two sides of the same coin. Our strategy is very ambitious; we want to reach everyone affected by cancer in Ireland and we can only do that through our people.”
Founded in 1963, the Irish Cancer Society is one of Ireland’s longest-established charities. Its high-profile fundraising events, such as Daffodil Day (which had to go digital during Covid), raise millions of euro every year for the organisation. The society employs more than 400 people (including a team of nurses dedicated to end of life care) and in 2021 it had income of just over €26 million and expenditure of just over €23 million.
This comes almost entirely from fundraising and pays for services such as nursing, counselling and a support line as well as contributing to cancer research and clinical trials.
Asked about the innovation aspect of her job, Byrne says it’s more to do with small things than with making a big bang. “It’s about looking at the challenges, problems and issues from the perspective of the person with cancer and how we can be creative about solving these problems and making things better for them,” she says.
Byrne gives the example of cancer patients missing hospital appointments because they don’t have anyone to drive them or because they face more complex issues. “If we know about their situation, we can help but it means getting close enough to know what they need,” she says. “Maybe this means we have to look at how we’re doing things and what aspect of our practice needs to change to offer them better individual support.”
The cancer statistics for Ireland are stark. Every three minutes someone here gets a cancer diagnosis and every hour someone dies from it. Cancer is on the rise but so too are survival rates and as people live longer after diagnosis and treatment, the need for more survivorship support is becoming a pressing issue for society.
“One of the big strategic challenges for an organisation like ours is that when it comes to big investments, new programmes or new initiatives, we have to look at where the greatest need is or where we can make the greatest impact,” Byrne says.
“These are the difficult choices because we have limited resources and there is so much need. In the corporate sector, it’s easier because there are clearer measures of what ‘good’ decisions look like. Your goal is to make a profit and your strategic decisions are based on that. Here our goal is to make an impact and to help people affected by cancer and that’s harder to measure.”
Byrne says that one of the things one takes for granted when working in large corporate organisations is the money in the background that’s keeping the wheels turning and funding areas such as leadership development, training and mentoring.
“I think mentoring is a really important way of fostering leadership talent and I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to have had people who took an interest in me and pushed me to take on new challenges,” she says. In the spirit of giving back, Byrne supports learning and development initiatives within her organisation and she recently took part in the Irish Management Institute’s 30 per cent Club mentoring programme which is a cross-company initiative aimed at high potential employees who benefit from coaching sessions with senior executives.
“It took place during the lockdown so the sessions were remote which was a bit of a challenge as you’re trying to develop trust and a relationship with the person. But in the end it worked very well and gave the mentee the opportunity to tease out personal and professional goals and to consider the bigger questions they were thinking about in relation to their careers,” Byrne says.
