Root Cause Analysis: Tracing a Problem to its Origins – Mind Tools

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a popular and often-used technique that helps people answer the question of why the problem occurred in the first place.

Root Cause Analysis seeks to identify the origin of a problem. It uses a specific set of steps, with associated tools, to find the primary cause of the problem, so that you can:

  1. Determine what happened.
  2. Determine why it happened.
  3. Figure out what to do to reduce the likelihood that it will happen again.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_80.htm

 

Prevent Conflicting Messages from Confusing Your Team – Harvard Business Review Blog

We’re all a little bit crazy — and at some point, most managers have certainly felt that way about their subordinates. But maybe you’re the one driving them nuts. Are you presenting them with a “double bind”—that is, asking them to behave simultaneously in contradictory ways? Organizations today routinely tell people to “Be empowered and innovative. Take risks;” while demanding at the same time “Make plan, and deliver on all your commitments.” If you think this drives people crazy, you’re right. So what can you do to help keep your people sane?

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/prevent-conflicting-messages-from-confusing-your-team/

 

 

Learning handbook – NHS Improving Quality

The Learning Handbook aims to guide users through the process of learning before, during and after programme and project activities in a systematic way, to get the most value from this activity.In order to continuously improve as an individual, team or organisation, capturing and sharing learning in an effective way to turn it into actionable knowledge is a critical success factor.

http://media.nhsiq.nhs.uk/learninghandbook/

 

Outsourcing the cuts: pay and employment effects of contracting out – The Smith Institute

Contracting out public services in the UK is now well established. Nevertheless it is still a deeply divisive issue and the debate about outsourcing tends to generate more heat than light. How it
affects employees is little researched. This report, commissioned by UNISON, seeks to help bridge that
information gap by profiling and evaluating in some detail the impact of contracting out on employee pay, terms and conditions in five case-study contracts. It finds the most salient consequence of outsourcing is not to drive up quality but to drive down wages.

http://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/outsourcing-the-cuts-pay-and-employment-effects-of-contracting-out.pdf

 

Why Your Values Are Not Enough – An Obsession With Transformation

Blog post from Peter Fuda suggesting the simplest and most effective way to bring values to life in an organization is to turn them into standards. It identifies that the gap between espoused values and how people actually behave in organisations is largely a function of five factors:

  • We judge ourselves by our noble intentions, but we judge everyone else by their actions
  • Values are a ‘how to’ not a ‘where to’.
  • Our values are sometimes in conflict with our aspirations.
  • Living by stated values requires courage.
  • We all have different rules that determine how we experience a particular value.

http://www.peterfuda.com/2014/09/19/why-values-are-not-enough/

 

Five Roles for Your Innovation Team – – The Discipline of Innovation Blog

Blog post on the five roles for an innovation team:

  1. Information Facilitation: process of finding information about innovation, and distributing this to people that are generating ideas. This will help them figure out how to best execute the new ideas. In this role you can also work on developing processes and infrastructure that support all parts of the innovation process. This type of group is most active in supporting idea generation.
  2. Opportunity Consultant: a group doing this will do everything that an Information Facilitation team does, but they will take a more active role in selecting ideas. They work to ensure that the ideas that are pursued connect with the organisation’s overall strategy. In this role you work on developing the best possible set of criteria for evaluating ideas, particularly for fit with objectives.
  3. Opportunity Enabler: this type of group goes one step further – they work to connect ideas with those that have the resources to execute them. Enabling collaboration is a big part of this role – you need a group in this role if you are pursuing an open innovation strategy. This type of team will also work on developing implementation plans, and trying to quantify outcomes and learnings from new initiatives. Opportunity enablers are active in supporting all steps in the innovation process – idea generation, selection, testing and diffusion.
  4. Idea Execution: this is the most active role you can have – this is a group that doesn’t just support the innovation process, they actually undertake all the steps. Most R&D groups fall into this category. Usually, with this type of group, there is no problem with getting innovative results – the bigger challenge is integrating their ideas back into the core business.
  5. Business Model Development: genuinely new innovations usually need new business models to help them realise their full market potential. Unlike the other four roles, this one can be mixed with the other four.

http://timkastelle.org/blog/2014/09/five-roles-for-your-innovation-team/

 

Reducing the variation of care at weekends – A test of change approach at Torbay hospital – NHS Improving Quality

South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has over 13 years of experience in developing seven day services across their care system. To address the challenges of managing increasing demand and the need to improve the flow though hospital back into the community, the team piloted an additional multi-disciplinary ward round at the weekend. As a result of the test of change the discharge of patients increased two fold, patients and staff reported improvement in care delivery and Monday mornings were ’calmer’ with more bed availability, something never seen consistently before.

The case study suggests:

  • Build the evidence for change by small test cycles
  • Using qualitative and quantitative metrics to evaluate the impact enabled staff to change working practices
  • Share and celebrate learning to enable more tests of change

http://www.nhsiq.nhs.uk/media/2422340/south_devon_cs_final.pdf