Plan a refocused organization

 

In this stage, your task is plan to reframe your organization based on the results of your trend analysis and program evaluation. Your plan needs to be convincing and feasible. Present your results in a formal paper useful for high-level strategic decision-making on future directions for your organization. All aspects of your plan need to be mutually supportive.

Before you start, check that you have support for the strategic planning process from all relevant stakeholders.

 

Find out what you organization does well and what it doesn't

If you don't already keep them, start routinely keeping accurate records of:

1. what your clients need
2. your clients' rights
3. your options for different services to your clients
4. current best practice
5. Laws and statutory frameworks that affect what you do, including duty of care, Occupational health and safety (OHS), Industrial awards
6. organizational guidelines:
• administrative processes
• ethical practices
• grievance complaints and disciplinary procedures
• Staff conditions

Analyse your records as you go to see how they could be used to benefit your centre.

1. Make a list of performance indicators to routinely monitor your client service. For example, look at comments at the front desk, what clients say to staff that indicates what they think (it can be quite informal), OHS incidents, accreditation quality indicators, etc.
2. Ask your clients about anything that prevents you giving them the service they really want or need.
3. Consider the strategic direction of your organization.
4. Look at external requirements (e.g. conditions of funding, accreditation, economic climate, etc.)
5. Do some research on current developments in service delivery. What ideas would make you more effective?

 

Brief your team on continuous improvement

Brief your team on your need to improve, innovate, and become more competitive. Go through your data that shows where your system has holes. Start by asking for ideas to improve on each area of need. Make a written list of ideas.Then ask them to identify other needs. Make a written list of this too, as well as any solutions.

As you go, foster a creative climate by encouraging staff to interact with each other. If you do this in a regular staff meeting, it will probably take some time for the message to get through. You want them (and yourself) to become more flexible, lateral-thinking, and entrepreneurial.

As your group creativity improves, you will probably find that you can improve on your first round of ideas. So write them all down.

(Click here for a list of the creative thinking processes.)

Records to keep:

• Your list of ideas.
• Any improvements on your list of ideas.
• A list of the creative thinking processes you tried, and how well they worked.

 

Selecting ideas

1. Select the new ideas with most potential. There's no particular number, as long as you know which things are a priority and choose only as many as you can feasibly do.
2. For each idea, identify the risks (i.e. what could go wrong) and say how you will manage them. If the risks are unacceptable, throw the idea out.
3. For each idea, do a cost-benefit analysis. Show that your efforts will really have the expected benefits for the time and money put into them. It really helps if you can prove that it will add to the bottom line with realistic figures. (Throw out any ideas where the benefits are not significant, or are poor value.)
4. How will you monitor the quality of each innovation? For example, you could:
• regularly review it in staff meetings
• ask clients for feedback
• keep observation notes on how well they work
• measure it against the performance criteria you identified
• look at the finances
• compare it to your accreditation criteria
• etc.

For each idea in your list, write down:

• the reason(s) for your decision to continue or discontinue it,
• a way of monitoring the quality when you implement it, and
• your reasons for choosing that way of monitoring quality.

 

Test your ideas

For each idea that still shows promise:

1. Get approval to test it.
• If it's an incremental improvement that's clearly within your current authority, it's "pre-approved" and you probably don't need to do any more.
• Hint: If a "pre-approved" improvement will give the impression of a major change, it might be tactful to discuss it with your supervisor anyway.
• You'll have to go through your organization's processes for getting approval. This is easy if you are CEO and it's your call. Otherwise, you'll have to go to your supervisor.)
• Note: If you can't get approval for an idea, it dies at this stage.
2. Test the ideas in a small pilot project. Keep a written record. For each idea, say how you got approval, your test results, and your plan to embed successful ideas into your systems.
3. If it fails, just admit it and accept it. I suggest you look at why it failed and whether it would be a good idea in any other circumstances. If it succeeds, recognize it and celebrate it. Tell people they did a good job and reward them in some way.
4. For each successful idea, plan a way to embed it into your organization's systems. Note that you might need another approval from your supervisor.

 

Decide on your best options and start planning

1. Based on the information you have collected, make a list of your options for providing a better service. Then consider your list and look for the option that is the best fit with your clients' needs and rights.
2. As part of your planning, negotiate with clients and get their agreement on appropriate goals, strategies and outcomes.
3. Back up your plans with:
• Contingency plans.
• A list of people and organizations who are available to give you support and expertise to get maximum effectiveness of service delivery
• Marketing and promotion techniques
• Evaluation and review
• Strategic planning and organisation development