When a system is under pressure, the instinct is to accelerate. What we've learned, across twenty years of NHS delivery at every scale, is that the block is almost never the technology. It's the human layer. Diagnose that first, and everything else moves faster.
Most change consultancies arrive with a model. Kotter, ADKAR, Prosci, McKinsey 7S: the frameworks are useful, and we know them all. But arriving with the answer before you've understood the problem is how change programmes fail. We formulate first. The intervention follows from the diagnosis.
Most consultancies arrive with a model and fit your organisation to it. The complexity gets simplified to match the framework. What's specific about your team, your history, your culture, and your current pressure gets treated as noise rather than signal. The programme runs. The change doesn't hold.
We arrive without a fixed answer. We listen to the narrative: what the team says about why it's not working, what's missing from that story, and what the maintaining factors are that nobody's naming. We formulate what's actually happening. Then we design an intervention that addresses it. Sometimes that calls for an established framework. Often it calls for something that holds several frameworks at once, which requires doctoral-depth expertise to execute credibly.
Individual teams and GP practices. Regional programmes across entire ICBs. National transformation programmes with the NHS England team. The method is the same at every scale: the formulation changes, the principles don't. That range of experience is what makes the diagnosis fast and the intervention credible.
Where formal evaluation is needed, we design it in from the start, not retrofitted at the end. Mixed-methods evaluation, board-ready reporting, and peer-reviewed academic outputs available as a bolt-on. We've published from NHS delivery programmes before, and we know what rigorous evidence looks like in a clinical context.
The case we point to most when a commissioner asks what we've actually delivered. It started as an implementation problem, and became something bigger, because we diagnosed the real block before trying to move it.
Devon needed online consultation rolled out across primary care, fast. The block wasn't technology or training. It was a system under huge resource pressure, with leaders out of capacity for change. Pushing harder would have broken it.
So we formulated first. The result was the Devon Digital Accelerator, a resilience-and-leadership change model that held, and won a Digital Innovation Award.
During COVID, the Devon Digital Accelerator's blueprint went on to support the national primary-care change programme as it accelerated at speed.
NHS England then commissioned UXC to coach the national digital-transformation team, including the national clinical lead, across three years. Same formulation-first method, where policy meets implementation.
Regional diagnosis → a regional change model that won a Digital Innovation Award → supported the national blueprint during COVID → NHS England commissioned national-team coaching.
Devon Digital Accelerator won a Digital Innovation Award; its blueprint went on to support the national change programme during COVID.
Regional delivery to every primary care team in Devon. Conferences, coaching, educational assets, all evaluated.
Coaching the national digital transformation team and clinical lead, where policy meets implementation at the highest level.
Whether you're dealing with a fractured team or a stalled implementation, the starting point is always the same: a formulation of what's actually happening before any intervention is designed.
Trust is low. Energy is depleted. The programme is at risk and the team can't see a way through. What's needed is a clinical-psychology approach to what's happened, not a team-building day.
The technology exists. The pilot ran. But adoption is stalling and nobody is quite sure why. The block is almost always in the human and organisational layer, which is exactly where we work.
Where a formal evaluation is required, for board reporting, commissioning decisions, or academic publication, we design it in from the start. Mixed-methods evaluation, REF-eligible outputs, and peer-reviewed journal publication are available as add-ons to any engagement.
We have published peer-reviewed research from NHS delivery programmes. If your programme needs to generate academic evidence as well as operational outcomes, that is not a separate workstream for us: it's a different output from the same body of work.
Project5 is the proof-of-method we point to most often when commissioners ask "show us a national one." It's what happens when the U·X·C loop runs against a real NHS need under real time pressure.
Set up by Craig Newman and Cordet Smart at the start of COVID. Recruited a volunteer team of coaches, administrators, marketeers, researchers and IT professionals from the team's NHS, academic, charity and business networks. Built a digital front door and a full mental-health service behind it, and gave it to the NHS.
15,000+ wellbeing sessions delivered at no cost to the NHS, a gift to the NHS team valued at over £1.5m, all volunteer-delivered. Delivered alongside the NHS wellbeing taskforce. Recognised by the Prime Minister with a Points of Light award. Closed in 2025 after five years, having met its founding mission.
From a focused team intervention to a multi-year embedded programme. Each shape has a clear scope and output: pricing is bespoke and discussed in the discovery call.
End-to-end design and delivery of a change programme, regional, divisional or national. Formulation-first. Conferences, leadership coaching, educational assets, mixed-methods evaluation. The Devon Digital Accelerator model, adapted to your scale and context.
For teams that have fractured under delivery pressure. Doctoral-depth formulation, psychological safety rebuilt as a design principle, and leadership capability developed for the next phase.
For funded innovations that aren't moving into practice. Implementation gap diagnosis, behavioural change model, adoption support and formal evaluation framework.
Pulled from interviews and end-of-programme evaluations across our NHS work. Names withheld; roles and context preserved. The same patterns surface in our corporate engagements.
What we've achieved is phenomenal. When we look back at where we started and where we've come to, it's nothing short of remarkable.
Probably the most important project I've been involved with in my last 18 years in general practice. A forum for NHS staff from different backgrounds to get together in a safe environment, and real change happened.
The coaching has been very good. It's allowing me the psychological safety to explore why something's going wrong, and then start sorting it.
Deeper peer-to-peer conversation than I've ever had with practice managers. We can be highly combative, but this was genuine cooperation and curiosity.
Only now we're coming towards the end are we getting to the point where we realise how helpful it's been, not just for online consultations but for thought processes, business management, everything.
A model for affecting change across many aspects of the NHS, because it effects real change in a psychologically safe environment.
Bring us your innovation programme, your accelerator scope, or your tender outline. We'll send a written read within 48 hours, including the cleanest commercial route to engage us, scoped to your buyer requirements.
90 minutes with both Chartered Psychologists. You leave with a two-side written formulation of your team, programme or innovation challenge, current state, maintaining factors, untapped resource, diagnostic needs and a first-pass intervention. Designed as a needs assessment to support board, commissioner or executive budgeting and resource-allocation decisions.
