Author: Janine Wilson

It can be quite a daunting prospect to develop a strategy. There is too much to do in the day job, time is tight, resources are constrained and the focus is on delivery of services.

There are organisations that provide their services without having an obvious strategy. They are delivering -aren’t they?

Well….maybe, but how well? Can they answer a resounding YES to the following questions:-

• are we all working to a clear and understood core purpose?
• do we all share the same vision and goals – where and what the organisation want to be?
• will we know when we get there – when the vision and goals are delivered?
• are we working efficiently and effectively?
• do we know that what we deliver is the right thing to the right people?
• do we know how well we are doing and how we can improve

If the answer to the above is NO then a bit of time spend co-designing a strategy with your stakeholders will be well worth the effort. A well developed strategy will give focus and clarity of purpose and direction. It will ensure better use of scarce resources by identifying priority areas for development and will give a roadmap for delivery of the priority areas.

 

Change is happening all around us and organisations can’t sit still. Everything is in a constant state of flux.

New ways of working, new ways of delivering, technology change, environmental pressures, austerity and the financial position and now Covid 19 – all driving the need for real fundamental innovative change … but often change ideas and great design ideas, hit barriers and stall, or worse, die.

There are many and varied reasons for this, but often the reasons are around a lack of understanding of the business, its context and how it operates. Difficulties arise where the change crosses different organisations (or different parts of the same organisation) with different cultures, leadership styles, governance requirements and processes – and not much in the way of common language, principles or vision for change.

Our change process addresses this by generating insights and data around the specific drivers, impacts, barriers and conditions that will effect that organisations change plans, programmes and projects. 

The research, insights and planning generated in this pre-design upstream Understand stage should minimise downstream design and delivery issues, make the implementation of the final change quicker, easier, more likely to be taken forward and more likely to succeed.

This wider process is flexible to allow organisations choice in the design process they use but does assume that delivery is (or will be) underpinned by a framework of agile programme management and change governance.

You can explore the Understand stage in more detail by following the link below.

In Frameworks for Change we introduced our change process of Understand | Design | Deliver and outlined the importance of that first stage of understanding the business and the context within which organisational change was taking place.

The Change Context Canvas is a powerful, strategic, pre-design stage tool that creates an understanding of the business and the context within which any kind of organisational change will take place. Using the canvas supports decision making in relation to:-

• Potential viability of change
• The optimal timing for change and moving to the design phase
• How identified barriers and constraints to change can be overcome
• Designing your strategy for successful and sustainable change

The power of the canvas comes from the gathering of data and insights across organisational domains that could affect the feasibility and viability of the potential change and from the transparency of the barriers and constraints that could affect implementation. These insight put the organisation in a powerful position to plan for change success.

Use the canvas when you are:

• Designing change programmes and projects
• Designing or re-designing services
• Collaborating with others on projects or services across different organisations

At Change Frameworks we help organisations gain that understanding by designing and facilitating workshops in which teams complete our change design tool, the Change Context Canvas. We can offer a range of services which include workshop design and delivery and training those interested in designing and facilitating workshops in organisations.

Please get in touch if this is of interest or you think we can help you.  

Many of the services provided by organisations, and the systems and processes that underpin them, are inefficient and wasteful. If organisations are to maximise the use of their scarce resources of  people, money and assets they need to find a way to identify and deal with this inefficiency and waste.

Maximising the benefit and value of scare resources requires organisations work effectively – providing the right services based on real user needs and insights. Services that are provided using the right operating models with the right underpinning systems and processes.

Change Frameworks Efficiency and Effectiveness Model has been developed to support organisations in assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of the services they provide and the systems and processes that underpin that service delivery.

The model acts as a prioritisation mechanism which allows organisations to ensure that their resources work for them in providing value to customers, citizens or service users.

Working through the model identifies redundancy and waste providing data to make decisions about what:

• provides value to the customer, citizen or user – and the organisation
• does not provide that value and therefore needs stopped, developed or improved
• could be reallocation for new provision
• could be consolidated or combined
• could provide resource savings

Change Frameworks can design and deliver workshops on Efficiency and Effectiveness and can train those interested in using this model in the workplace. We also collaborate with partners to deliver consultancy and capacity building in service design, lean and process improvement which supports the outcomes of the Model.

Please get in touch if this is of interest to you.