EPA Performance Scaffolding: David Agyei

› 1. Panic Reference Card Golden thread, key figures, open questions, buy-time phrases. Read this before 14:00.

Your anchor sentence. Return to this if any answer feels adrift.

"The SWANN Phase 2 project directly addresses Shropshire Council's financial recovery mandate by building the data infrastructure needed to demonstrate cost avoidance on escalations: a quantifiable return on investment in early intervention that was previously impossible to evidence."

121 million pound financial emergency → Phase 1 failed to create data infrastructure → Phase 2 fixes governance before technology → 390,000 pound illustrative annual saving once infrastructure is live → Shropshire Plan 2022 to 2025 outcome alignment.

Key Figures: Know These Cold

Figure	What it means	Source
£121m	Financial emergency declared by Shropshire Council, 2024. The backdrop to everything.	Executive Summary; Proposal Section 1
£770k to £851k	Annual meeting costs across Children's Services. 12.5 to 14 full-time social worker equivalents.	FFP Comms Update; ELD K1.3
£390k	Illustrative annual cost avoidance from SWANN Phase 2. ADASS and PSSRU proxy. Labelled as proxy, not confirmed.	Cost Avoidance v0.1; Proposal Section 6
15 coachees	West Midlands Coaching Pool. 2 returned from burnout. 6 received promotions.	Coaching Testimonials 2025; ELD K4.2
73+ staff	Engaged in As-Is Meetings Mapping data collection across Children's Services.	Charlotte Saywell testimony; ELD K5.1
31 → 13 referrals	31 outstanding SWANN referrals (no SLA) as of 27 May. By 2 June: 13 remaining for Shropshire Mental Health (encryption fix in place). Live Well Shropshire cleared. 10 June update: confirmed not requiring further action from Customer Services; Shropshire Mental Health responding to residents. Confirm final count on 18 June.	SWANN updates 2 June; RAID log; Kate Hobbs
5 partners	British Red Cross, Shropshire Mental Health Support, Community Resource, Live Well Shropshire, ICB.	SWANN Partnership documentation

The Two Open Questions: Prepared Answers

Open Question 1: Who is the strategic owner? Update this before 14:00. If you have the name confirmed, use it directly. If still unresolved, your answer is:

"I want to be accurate rather than give you a placeholder name. The strategic ownership question is formally documented in the RAID log as an open risk. What I can tell you is that the project sponsor from a governance perspective is [confirm name]. The specific strategic owner for the data governance outcomes is still being confirmed at directorate level. I flagged this early and have escalated it formally. That is the honest status."

Open Question 2: What is the current SLA position for the referrals (31 as of 27 May, 13 as of 2 June)? Check for a current figure before 14:00. If unchanged, your answer is:

"As of 2 June 2026, 13 referrals remained outstanding for Shropshire Mental Health, down from 31 on 27 May. The root cause was a mailbox encryption issue that blocked Customer Services from seeing incoming referrals. This has been fixed: a new Swan mailbox gives Jim and Chelsea decrypt access. By 10 June 2026, confirmed at the Phase 2 requirements workshop that the 13 were not dependent on further Customer Services action: referrals had been forwarded; Shropshire Mental Health were responding to residents. The Live Well Shropshire referrals are cleared. There are no formal SLAs in the system, confirmed by Kate Hobbs and Jim Ford at the 2 June meeting. Establishing SLAs for the referral pathway is a specific Phase 2 deliverable. You cannot manage performance you cannot measure. The portal creates the tracking infrastructure that makes SLA enforcement possible. I will confirm the position as of 18 June before this assessment."

Buy Time Phrases: Use These Without Apology

"Let me be precise about that, because I want to give you an accurate answer rather than a general one."
"The specific evidence I would point to is..." (then buy 2 seconds while you recall it).
"That is an important question. What I know from the evidence is..."
"Can I come at that from the evidence rather than from memory? The clearest example is..."

If You Lose Your Thread

Reset protocol. Stop. Take one breath. Say: "Let me just make sure I am answering the right question." Then return to the golden thread sentence. Ask yourself: does my answer connect back to the financial recovery mandate and the data infrastructure gap? If yes, you are on track.

› 2. Theory Quick Map Frameworks A–Z. If the assessor asks about X, say Y. One line per framework. Name it, place it, evaluate it.

Name the framework. Say where you used it. Evaluate it (that is what moves Pass to Distinction). A single sentence evaluation is enough: "The limitation is..." or "In hindsight I would..."

If asked about...	Say this	One-line application	Where used
Change management / why Phase 1 failed	Kotter's 8-Step Model + Lewin's 3-Stage	Kotter explains what Phase 1 skipped (no urgency, no coalition, no early wins). Lewin: Phase 1 never unfroze the governance culture.	Proposal Sections 9 to 10; Phase 2 design rationale
Coaching someone / supporting a colleague	GROW Model (non-directive)	Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward. Used with Claire Allen (sickness absence) and across 15 West Midlands Coaching Pool coachees.	Claire Allen testimony; Shanda Reid testimony; ELD K4.2
Financial value / proving cost avoidance	Theory of Change + Proxy Costing	Logic chain: early intervention prevents escalation, which avoids statutory care costs. Quantified via ADASS/PSSRU proxy. Explicitly labelled as proxy, not confirmed outturn.	Cost Avoidance v0.1; Proposal Section 6; ELD K1.3
Individual resistance to change / onboarding partners	ADKAR (Prosci)	Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Each partner organisation was at a different ADKAR stage when Phase 2 started.	SWANN partner onboarding; Phase 2 change management
Leadership style / adapting to different people	Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership	Adapted style from directing (low-maturity workstream members) to delegating (Kate Hobbs on CRM configuration). Not one style throughout.	SWANN workstream leads; coaching pool; Charlotte Saywell testimony
Organisation-level diagnosis / root cause of Phase 1	McKinsey 7S	All 7 elements misaligned in Phase 1: Strategy unclear, Structure fragmented, Systems absent, Staff unclear on roles. Used to frame the Phase 2 redesign rationale.	Proposal Section 9; Phase 2 business case framing
Project delivery method / why Agile	Agile/Scrum: Empirical Process Control	Requirements for data governance and referral fields were emergent, not fixed. Agile allowed iteration. Used Agile internally; milestone language externally for governance reporting.	SWANN Phase 2 delivery structure; sprint retrospectives
Stakeholder management / partner engagement	Mendelow's Power/Interest Matrix	Mapped all five SWANN partners by power and interest to decide where to invest engagement effort. ICB: high power, had to be managed closely. Community Resource: lower power, kept informed.	FFP As-Is Meetings; SWANN Phase 2 partner engagement
Team development / managing the workstream team	Tuckman's Stages + Belbin Team Roles	Recognised the Phase 2 workstream team was in Storming when data governance disagreements surfaced. Used Belbin to identify role gaps.	SWANN Phase 2 workstream team; coaching pool group work

› 3. Distinction Language What Distinction sounds like versus Pass. Internalise these before Wednesday.

Distinction is not more information. It is: name the framework, state why you chose it, evaluate whether it worked, and say what you would do differently. That structure alone moves Pass to Distinction.

Language Comparison

Pass level (avoid these)	Distinction level (use these)
"I think the stakeholder engagement went well."	"The evidence showed the engagement approach worked: Charlotte Saywell's testimony notes that partner organisations changed their own internal practices as a result of the As-Is Meetings mapping process."
"We used Agile because it was flexible."	"I chose Agile specifically because the requirements for the data governance model and referral form fields were emergent. A Waterfall approach would have locked in requirements we could not yet define. The limitation is that Agile made milestone reporting for governance harder, which is why I used milestone language externally while running sprints internally."
"It was a team effort."	"My specific contribution was the dependency mapping across the five concurrent workstreams. I introduced the cross-workstream check into each sprint retrospective, which surfaced the data governance dependency on CRM configuration before it became a blocker."
"I tried to engage the partners early."	"I applied Mendelow's matrix to map the five partner organisations by power and interest. The ICB was high power and initially uncertain, so I prioritised direct engagement at leadership level. Community Resource was lower power, so I kept them informed rather than consulted at that stage."
"I used the GROW model for coaching."	"I used GROW as a non-directive framework specifically because the coachee, Claire Allen, needed to own the solution to the sickness absence problem herself. If I had prescribed the answer, she would not have been invested in it. The outcome was that she designed the process change, which meant implementation had no resistance."
"The cost avoidance figure is £390,000."	"The illustrative cost avoidance is £390,000. I am being precise: that is a proxy figure based on ADASS and PSSRU unit costs, not an evidenced outturn. I labelled it explicitly as a proxy in the proposal because presenting it as a confirmed saving would have been intellectually dishonest. The benefits realisation plan is the mechanism that converts it from a proxy to a real figure once the portal is live."

Sentence Starters That Signal Distinction

"I applied [framework] because [specific reason], and the evidence of whether it worked is..."
"My specific contribution to that was..."
"The evidence showed..." (not "I felt" or "I think")
"The limitation of that approach was..., and in hindsight I would..."
"I want to be precise: [careful distinction between two things that might be confused]."
"The KSB this most directly evidences is... because..."

Never Say These

"Basically..." (just state the thing clearly, without the hedge)
"I think..." (the assessor wants evidence, not opinion)
"I felt it went well." (what did the outcome show?)
"We tried to..." (what did you actually do, and what was the result?)
"It was a team effort." (what was your individual contribution?)
"I kind of..." (eliminate all hedges; they undermine competence signals)

What Distinction Actually Means

The assessor is testing for conscious competence. They want to see that you knew why you made the choices you made, not just that you made them. A Pass candidate describes what happened. A Distinction candidate demonstrates what they learned from it, what framework they used, why they chose that framework over another, and what they would refine if they did it again. The evaluation sentence is the thing most candidates miss. Add it to every answer: "The limitation was... In hindsight I would..."