Improving Organisational Performance
Thriving in complex environments requires the ability to constantly and consistently adapt and match organisational performance to new opportunities and imperatives. Boards and management teams need to be constantly alert to the internal and external context within which they operate. Being alert and aware needs to be matched with the capability to deliver quickly and effectively.
The pace of change and the policy and organisational context within the health service provides particular challenges for organisations which have their roots in a more stable and predictable environment. Whether anticipating market opportunities or resolving organisational performance challenges before they get out of hand the old hierarchical approaches and long lead times are no longer acceptable (even if they ever were). New intelligence and information nervous systems need to be supplemented with the capability to respond in near real time. Leadership, ownership and the logistics of delivery need to be aligned and synchronised.
At Outhentics the focus is on helping organisations develop strategies for building sustainable capabilities for sustainable organisational performance improvement. The main interlinked themes of our approach are:
Leadership
- Leadership at Board level sets the tenor and values throughout the organisation. The ability to coherently and convincingly convey a credible and engaging picture of the context within which the organisation operates, its priorities and its key challenges are an essential part of the Board role.
- Just as essential is the ability of the Board to reinforce the values and priorities both through the performance questions it asks of the organisation and its priorities for development, support and recruitment.
- A key part of senior leadership is the identification, development of leadership throughout the organisation. Hand in hand with this is delegation - the permission and indeed expectation that you are equipping leaders to take the initiative in anticipating and responding to challenges and opportunities. In response to the intelligence provided by an effective information and intelligence nervous system and the support and training provided to staff these leaders have the capability and confidence to drive through systematic improvements to organisational performance, to experiment and take risks within boundaries, to be acknowledged both for success and for sharing the knowledge of what worked and did not work.
Ownership
- Successful performance may be driven by the top leadership but delivery comes through motivated and well trained staff who understand and are committed to the objectives and values of the organisation and who are constantly seeking ways to improve the performance of their respective parts of the organisation.
- Mobilising staff and retaining their confidence and commitment is critical, especially when an organisation faces significant performance challenges such as loss of market share, financial instability or quality and productivity failures.
- Staff are, along with your patients, customers or clients, the best advocates for your organisation and the most critical when they detect dissonance between the 'talk' and the 'walk'.
- Whether it is visibility of the senior leadership, transparency and engagement in tackling the big challenges, the clarity of the way the context and priorities are communicated, the alignment of the performance, incentive and development systems, the feedback and knowledge mobilisation networks or simply finding the time to listen - ownership is built on mutual trust and respect. It takes time to earn it and no time at all to lose it.
Logistics
- Sustainable organisational performance improvement and change (as opposed to short term bursts of energy soon dissipated) is delivered through effective and aligned logistics providing the long term 'lift' to supplement the leadership 'pull' and the staff 'push'.
- If logistical change and re-alignment is not addressed as part of the performance improvement programme then the risk is either that when leadership changes or moves on the system simply 'snaps' back into the old methodologies and approaches or enormous effort is wasted in the process of change as it is driven across the grain of unaligned logistics.
- If you need pesuading think about this: the D-Day landings had outstanding leadership and those engaged on the endeavour were without doubt committed and engaged but getting to the beaches and fighting through to the Rhine and beyond would not have happened without superlative logistics - and logistics that were fully aligned with the mission.
- By logistics we mean the full range of support activities within an organisation including:
- recruitment and training
- objective setting, performance review, appraisal and reward strategies
- research
- clinical audit (in health services)
- finance systems
- information systems and technologies
- knowledge mobilisation frameworks
- procurement and supply chain management
- Apply these simple tests to each aspect of the logistics of an organisation
- how does it add value to the process chain of which it forms part?
- how is that value measured, performance monitored and variation acted upon?
- how is it explicitly aligned with organisational priorities?
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