Thanks!

Just a quick thank you to Tom Reynolds and all who were involved in organising and facilitating yesterday's Leadership Development Community of Practice Focus Group at Layden House. It was very good afternoon for learning and networking - and hopefully offering some ideas about the development of this COP. 

The discussion around evaluation of leadership development and how to weave that into the commissioning process was useful and could well have gone on for quite a while longer!

It was also refreshing to have the space for providers, commissioners and supporters to meet without the shackles of procurement getting in the way! Equally more time for this would have been useful!

I found these two links on evaluation that might interest some:

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/14067/01/Leadership_Evaluation_report.pdf 

"This report evaluates a Leadership Development programme delivered by the Wessex Courses Centre (WCC) and commissioned by the Hampshire and Isle of White Workforce Development Confederation (WDC). As part of the ongoing commitment to incorporate evidence into practice, the WDC commissioned an independent evaluation as part of this development course. This evaluation wasundertaken collaboratively by the Health Care Innovation Unit (HCIU) and the School of Management at the University of Southampton."

http://www.wkkf.org/~/media/10BF675E6D0C4340AE8B038F5080CBFC.ashx

 

"This handbook is guided by the belief that evaluation should be supportive and responsive to projects, rather than become an end in itself. It provides a framework for thinking about evaluation as a relevant and useful program tool. It is written primarily for project directors who have direct responsibility for the ongoing evaluation of W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded projects. However, our hope is that project directors will use this handbook as a resource for other project staff who have evaluation responsibilities, for external evaluators, and for board members" 

 

Apart from the fact that I always thought it was the Isle of Wight... these two documents look interesting.

 Thanks again and good to meet everyone yesterday!

Jon

This handbook is guided by the belief that evaluation should be supportive and

 

responsive to projects, rather than become an end in itself. It provides a framework

for thinking about evaluation as a relevant and useful program tool. It is written

primarily for project directors who have direct responsibility for the ongoing

evaluation of W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded projects. However, our hope is that

project directors will use this handbook as a resource for other project staff who have

evaluation responsibilities, for external evaluators, and for board membersThis handbook is guided by the belief that evaluation should be supportive andresponsive to projects, rather than become an end in itself. It provides a frameworkfor thinking about evaluation as a relevant and useful program tool. It is writtenprimarily for project directors who have direct responsibility for the ongoingevaluation of W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded projects. However, our hope is thatproject directors will use this handbook as a resource for other project staff who haveevaluation responsibilities, for external evaluators, and for board members"

 

 

 

Disruptive technology... or maybe disruptive questions?

I met an old friend for lunch yesterday and we got to talking about 'disruptive technologies' - the kinds of new gizmos and systems that really change the way we live our lives. I remember Charles Handy talking about this in his book 'The Age of Unreason' - although he did not call them disruptive technologies then. One of his ideas was how the invention of the chimney meant that you could have a house with more rooms - and so began the fragmentation of family life.

Of course when we think of disruptive technologies we are now more likely to think of the internet, MP3 players or indeed how my car ESP system helped me manage a skid on snow the other day without ending up in a ditch.

But I got to thinking about what might be disruptive questions? The sorts of questions that if asked of a way of working - might just change we the way we look at a service and encourage people to do things things differently - in a leaner way perhaps.

Over the years, I have been collecting a set of questions which I often present to people to help them redesign a process or a service. I say that they come with a guarantee: if you ask them seriously of any process or service and don't find at least one (or indeed two or three) ways of improving the service, I will eat my hat!

So here are the questions - which I offer as a means to help people reflect on their ways of working and come up with new ways of doing it (in no particular order):

 

• Have we agreed the stakeholder requirements?
• Are the providers involved adequately trained?
• Are there too many ‘handovers’?
• Is the process being done in the right order?
• Could it be made simpler with a ‘triage’ stage?
• Could we make better use of technology?
• Where are the sources of rework?
• Could some parts of the process be done at the same time?
• Could we get the users / clients / etc. to do more?
• Are there too many checks and controls?
• Could we get our partners or suppliers to take action?
• Could we create an expert system to make it work better?
• Is there a ‘standard’ way of carrying out the process?
• Could different people or agencies be providing the service (or part of it)?
• Have we made any cultural or professional assumptions that are getting in the way?
• Are the performance measures helping?
• Could we stop providing the service altogether?
• Are decision making protocols getting in the way?
• Does the process contribute to outcome goals?

I hope this proves useful to people. Please blog here with any results that you come up with.

One of my favourites was from a local authority that looked into its street light repairing process. They quickly realised that when they sent out an engineer to see if the street light was in fact not working (as had been reported by a member of the public) they were in fact assuming that the public probably lied. When they changed this assumption to 'the public are probably telling us the truth' - they saved themselves huge amount of resources by sending out the fixing engineer first.

Jon

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/

 

The power of a good checklist

Yes - we all 'hate' checklists and all that infuriating 'box-ticking' that goes along with it... But are we in danger of overlooking the power and usefulness of a good checklist that has been well researched? 

Listening to the radio yesterday morning (BBC Radio 4) I heard a piece about how the airline industry & the World Health Organisation have been working with the NHS to deploy the 'Surgical Safety Checklist'. The main principle of this seems to be about team work and making sure that, at the start of an operation, everyone knows what they are doing. 

To quote a well known meerkat - "simples!" 

There are the other stories about these developments here, here and here. And there is more information about the whole approach to create "The Productive Operating Theatre" on the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement here. 

But back to checklists... how many other services could be improved for want of a good checklist? Whenever I talk about 'knowledge management' (which is often over complicated beyond belief) I talk about the value of a simple checklist as being the embodiment of practical knowledge. 

What checklists do you work with... and what new ones would help?

Original blog: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/

10,000... 300... one blog of small & creative ideas!

Just a note to say that my 'small creative ideas' blog has now had 10K page loads since I set it up 10 months ago. The purpose of the blog is support, celebrate and disseminate the small and creative ideas that are making a difference in local government - and elsewhere in the public and third sectors.

Please visit and take a look if you have not already done so. There are more than 300 innovations there to save money, improve service or just make work better.

And if you have an idea to share - please let me know. Thank you.

http://smallcreativeideas.blogspot.com/

(And I have given it a facelift too - prompted by some feedback I got from one visitor)

Jon

jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk 

Help wanted: Community safety / cohesion

Hallo

I am trying to track down Associations of people involved with either (or both) community safety and community cohesion. Is there (say) an Association of Community Safety Managers / Practitioners ? Or similar for Community Cohesion?

(I am doing some work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families and I want to contact people from these associations to be involved in some intervention design work.) 

Many thanks!

Jon

jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk

+44 (0) 7771 537535

+44 (0) 1280 822585

www.jonharveyassociates.co.uk

When would you say 'no' to authority?

The Milgram experiments are famous for demonstrating how people will, under the right circumstances, carry out violent acts due to authority. (Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)

But what of the people who refused to go along with the elaborate experimental charade. I have just been pointed towards this site (thank you 'the psychologist' January 2010) which has a first hand description by someone of why they refused to administer more pain to the 'subject'... 

(rest is on my blog: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/12/when-would-you-say-no-to-authority.html)

... so when would you say no?

Leadership in three words...

Recently I posted this challenge on my blog: 

Which three words sum up the kind of leadership we need for 2010?

So far I have had 19 replies from a wide range of people. Please add your comments there or here (or both!)...

http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/12/leadership-in-three-words.html