Get to know Lucy Gibbs - Our Client Solutions Director

 

I’m Lucy Gibbs and I’m the Client Solutions Director. 

 

 

I get to feel like I’ve made a difference every day and that is something that is rare in any job but at the end of every day I always feel like I’ve helped somebody even if it’s in a small way by being there for them, listening to them, understanding them, helping them to see a different path forward, putting together a document that I know will help them – it doesn’t really matter what I’m working on. I get thanks from my clients and get them to make connections that they possibly wouldn’t have made without me that enable them to go onto better things and because we work so much with people who are struggling in general, it’s so rewarding to see people go from struggling to not struggling. I don’t often get to see them go to brilliant and amazing, although some of them do keep in touch with me and tell me about those things. When you first meet people and they trust you enough to tell you how stressed they might be or despondent they might be even if you can take a bit of that stress and pressure off, it makes a real difference and even sometimes just building hope where there wasn’t any makes a real difference so that is really important to me to feel like I’ve done something with every day of my life that will make a difference in at least one person's day that’s what I seek to get out of my work and I get it. 

 

 

Every day is different, so I haven’t really got a ‘I do this thing at the start of every day’. But I do like to get to the office first so that I’ve got a bit of time to prep for the day and get into that zone again. I’m quite good at compartmentalising so getting from home Lucy and mum Lucy into work Lucy mode just takes a little bit of time, so I don’t like rushing into something, I do like to have a bit of time to get myself into that way of thinking every day. Obviously, I do work all over the country so it's not always possible to do this, as when I’m on client site my day is so different to when I’m in the office at Keele because I have got to be ready for almost anything. When you’re there in the same physical space as so many people you can get a completely different interaction with them; someone can just grab you in a corridor and say, “while you’re here can you help me” and you’ve got to be ready for anything that they might say. My responsibility is to my clients and my client is the whole council not just the manager of a planning service and the people within that planning service and so when I'm on site there I'm totally focused and trying to pick up on things happening around me not just in the meetings that I have scheduled. It’s getting the culture and vibe of where I’m working. At the end of the day, I like to have a few moments of quiet to make sure that I’ve got everything lined up from the day as I hate leaving tasks to pick up on another day. I'm definitely an implementer, completer and finisher type of person, I like to have things done. 

 

 

My kids inspire me; they’re hardworking people, watching my kids navigate being a teenager with openness and hard work and watching them put their all into their hobbies and doing well at school it gives me hope for the future. My Husband inspires me. My mum inspires me. My mum is a yoga teacher, and she is very ‘what will be will be’, there’s many lessons that I get from her. My grandma is 96, she lives very much in the present and doesn’t mourn for the past and that is inspirational. Mike definitely inspires me, his ability to hold large amounts of complex information in his head, his unwavering commitment to doing the ethically and morally right thing – I haven’t always had that in my working life and that’s something that I strive for but it doesn’t come naturally to me. 

 

 

When I was a mentor for the Youth Offending Service in Stoke, I got to see firsthand the impact of well-meaning but overly busy public servants who make decisions that can be so far-reaching. Some of the children that I supported in this role, their path to offending was one that was sometimes started by a well-meaning teacher or social worker trying to do their best with their limited resources and making a decision about that child and what they needed that in hindsight could be tracked directly to this young person offending and seeing children who desperately needed specialist provision, seeing their needs go unmet and tracking their path and feeling unsupported, and seeing the impact of busy people in public services making sometimes rushed decisions on things; not because they didn’t have the experience or the will to do the right thing sometimes it was a case of stretching the resources that they had. The ripples of the impact that these rushed decisions have affect society more than you realise and end up costing councils more money in the long-term. This experience made me so determined that people who are providing really valuable public services should have what they need to be able to do a good job, it’s not okay to stretch people so thin in these circumstances that they are having to do the bare minimum sometimes just to keep meeting their professional standards. 

 

 

Tap dancing! I do ballet, tap, disco and limerick. I love to dance, I think it’s one of the most brilliant things anyone can do and it carries me through very stressful times – I prioritise it. I just feel like it improves my mental and physical wellbeing so much. My kids also dance as well since they were little. Cooking and eating are another one of my passions, I used to be a chef, so I love good food and great flavours, I read cookbooks and seek out exciting eating experiences in restaurants. 

 

 

Rewarding. It’s feeling like you’re making a difference every day. Seeing colleagues come through, especially when it’s their first ever job showing them the world of work and how it can be – genuinely human centred, bring your whole self to work we want it we want your passions, strengths weaknesses and want you to be yourself. Having lots of colleagues that have come through straight from university and watching how they find their feet and seeing them flourish. 

 

 

I think it’s the East Ridding of Yorkshire project. That was the first ever project that I led start to finish for this company and not only was it the most professionally rewarding experience of helping them to put better systems and processes in place but they’ve gone onto bigger and better afterwards and to me that is the best thing that they’ve gone onto strive for more. They’ve got the tools now to keep improving and they’ve taken them lessons in, and they can tackle anything that’s to come now because there will always be difficult times, but they’ve got what they need to continue being successful now. When I see clients after the project has finished, they are excited to show me how they’ve been working and their results when before they didn’t know how they were turning up to work every day.