How a crisis gave Amnesty International UK permission for difficult strategic decisions
For years, Amnesty International UK faced organisational challenges that leadership recognised but struggled to address. The comfortable status quo persisted because “getting everyone to agree was going to be hard.” Then an institutional racism crisis brought intense public scrutiny, creating an unavoidable moment of reckoning.
The approach
Crisis as catalyst: External attention made it impossible to avoid confronting systemic organisational problems.
From consensus to clarity: Moved away from seeking comfortable agreement towards making explicit, uncomfortable choices about priorities and trade-offs.
Rigorous business planning: Implemented systematic decision-making frameworks in which potential activities are evaluated against clear criteria – impact, scale, resource requirements, and time commitment.
Genuine prioritisation: Applied the discipline of treating unrestricted funding “as if we were a funder making choices” – every activity justified against strategic criteria.
The result
A comprehensive organisational transformation programme built on genuinely strategic decision-making. The crisis did not create the need for change – AIUK’s challenges existed before – but it created the permission and urgency to make difficult choices with uncomfortable implications.
Three years on, the organisation now has:
Clear business plans, with 90%+ of staff having objectives directly linked to strategic priorities
Systematic evaluation of all major activities against success criteria
Explicit trade-offs where every “yes” includes a clear “no” to something else
Empowered teams with shortened approval chains
Meaningful measures that help staff understand their contribution to impact
Key learning
“Crisis forced us to overcome the inertia of seeking consensus. Without it, we would likely have continued analysing problems without committing to solutions. The crisis gave us permission to say: ‘This is difficult, but here’s why we’re choosing this path.’”
Sacha Deshmukh, CEO
Why it worked
The crisis created unavoidable urgency, but leadership chose to use that moment strategically rather than reactively. Instead of making quick fixes, they built systematic approaches to prioritisation and resource allocation that outlasted the crisis itself. They recognised that avoiding hard choices was not neutrality — it was an implicit bet on the status quo.
The transformation succeeded because leadership moved from “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do both” to “We’re choosing X over Y for these specific reasons.” That shift from aspiration to commitment enabled genuine strategic change.
This case study was developed based on an interview by Carmen Barlow with Sacha Deshmukh, CEO at Amnesty International UK. Claude.ai supported in the synthesis and writing of the case study.