Change for Impact
You have succeeded at moving your programs from a focus on utilization to a focus on impact. Not only do you now know whether your programs are fully enrolled, on your way to annual service goals, but you also know whether participants are reaping positive benefits from being in your programs. Are job seekers earning new certifications? Are they being placed in jobs that pay a livable wage? Are they still employed 6 and 12 months later? Do they earn raises? Are your mental health clinic clients experiencing a reduction in symptoms or improved assessment scores? Are your older adults reporting positive changes in their levels of loneliness and elevated connectivity to community? Are your high school students earning credits to advance to the next grade each year? Are your college access program participants persisting in their college studies?
Uh oh! What happens if the data suggests little to no positive impact? Now what are you supposed to do? Time to become an inclusive change agent!
Change management does not rest exclusively on your shoulders. You are responsible for calling the right folks to the table, empowering them to speak to the challenges, and equipping them with the resources to enact change. I would suggest those right people are a particular program’s direct service staff, program participants, internal and external stakeholders, and perhaps adjacent agency programs that might be able to lend a helping hand and move the needle in the right direction.
Impact shortfalls are not failures, just an opportunity to learn, hypothesize on a new model of care, and tweak accordingly. One of my favorite weekly meetings in which I have ever participated was a small team meeting in a workforce development center every Friday morning. We would look at the data for the week: numbers enrolled, numbers placed, and numbers in each tier of the funnel. Then, with likely a second cup of coffee in hand, we started asking questions. Are these numbers going to get us to quarterly goals or did we have to tweak our model? Were we seeing enough job seekers or did we need to do some targeted marketing? Were our Tier 2 and 3 participants making progress at a rate that matched how fast Tier 1 participants were being placed? If not, why? If the numbers suggested not enough Tier 1 participants were getting placed was that a training issue or an employer partner issue?
The outcomes of these meetings were numerous. Staff were empowered. They were working within a program model they created, informed by data, not upper management, and they were holding caseloads that they built and determined they could manage. Clients also benefited. They waited only minutes to see an Employment Coordinator, despite the program allowing for drop in enrollment, and they ended up in one-on-one appointments versus group workshops that historically lasted all day. This prevented them from having to figure out how to cover transportation, lunch and perhaps even child care, yet walk away at the end of the day without personal accomplishments toward job placement because they were not where the balance of the group was at. Ultimately, happy program staff were completing record numbers of intakes, placing more than 50% of their happy clients in jobs that stuck.
How did leadership manage this change? We produced the spreadsheet each Friday morning that tracked all relevant data points and asked questions here and there to encourage staff to analyze out of curiosity and without fear and find their voice. We layered in client voice when independent feedback was received or satisfaction surveys were completed on a regular schedule.
While much has been written about how difficult and painful change is, calm, data-informed change management doesn’t have to be either.