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Praxis Solutions

~ Accelerate the Journey

Praxis Solutions

Tag Archives: StrategyMapping

Developing Leaders or a Leadership System?

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Dan Edds in Leadership Systems, Praxis Solutions

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Accelerating the Journey, Baldridge, DanEdds, Leadership Systems, StrategyMapping

leadership-systemThere is no end to bestselling books, videos, seminars, and educational opportunities on leadership. A search on Amazon for books on leadership yields 204,187 results. The same search for “leadership systems” yields only 94 results. Clearly, little is being written on understanding leadership from a systems perspective.

The Baldrige Quality Criteria might be the singular voice for understanding leadership from the perspective of a system rather than a collective group of individuals competing for power. A focus on developing individual leadership skills apart from a clear understanding of a leadership system, usually results in chaos, personal silos, and contention rather than collaboration. Public education might be a valid case on point.

In a recent project with a regional hospital we have the privilege of facilitating the design of a formal leadership system. The results are rather stunning. In our first facilitated focus group the question to their executive leadership was put this way: What is the singular result you looking for from the leadership system? As the facilitation team, we were expecting something like “exceptional patient health”, “patient satisfaction”, strategic execution, etc. However, the COO swung the team to a different way of thinking. “Empowered People” was the singular result of a leadership system. This was followed up by three types of people that needed empowerment – patients, staff, and community. The logic was impeccable. Empowered people is the road to executing mission and vision.
Subsequent facilitated workshops identified critical leadership behaviors that would result in “empowered people”. This was then followed up with specific leadership activities to support leadership behaviors and eventually mission execution. During a final debrief, one of the senior leadership in the group stated: “I have always been promoted because I was a good nurse. But as a leader, I was never sure what I was supposed to do. Now I do? Clearly identifying the requirements, behaviors and activities of a leadership system implications.
Like any system, the first mandate is to identify the requirements of the system. When these requirements are clearly understood, the leadership behaviors, activities, and performance metrics all fall into place. Leaders know exactly what is expected and how they will be measured. Individual leadership styles become subordinate to the leadership system.

Social Service Nonprofits

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, Featured, StrategyDevelopment, StrategyMapping

Developing a strategy is a critical and fairly normal part of operating a successful nonprofit. Communicating that strategy to staff, donors, and leadership is something entirely different. Strategic plans tend to be formal documents that all too often end up gathering dust on near the reception desk and then somewhere in the vaults of important documents. However, there is one simple tool that will make a strategic plan a vital document that will clearly communicate the future – A Strategy Map.

A strategy map is a one page graphical image of strategy. In graphical image it will tell the story of the organization, what it needs to be successful, what they must do to be successful, and who are they going to do it for.

Government

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, Featured, LeanInGovernment, StrategyMapping

We hear all the time, “government should operate more like a business”. After consulting with government agencies now for nearly 20 years we are convinced of one thing – those who say this, are the first to back away from it when the opportunity to function like a business arises.

But there is one area where government can function like a business and when it does magic happens. This is in the area of measuring and scorecarding. We just completed a project for a large county in central Oregon. Good people running the County. Strong and improving economy. The project focused on the revenues into the Community Development Department, developing a 5 year financial plan, and creating a Balanced Scorecard to help them manage the department by fact and result.

The results are early but the opportunities are clear: managers are using data to manage people, quality, and workloads. The Commissioners, upon seeing the scorecard and early results “excited”.

This is an exciting area for Praxis Solutions and one where are experience in scorecarding, performance management, and lean can have a real impact

Mapping Your Strategy

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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Communicating Strategy, DanEdds, StrategyDevelopment, StrategyMapping

The Hidden Power of Mapping Strategy

The research is compelling. Most exercises in strategic planning fail to achieve even minimal gains. School districts, nonprofits, social service agencies, State agencies, and colleges all go though a round of strategy development every 5-10 years. But what happens to the documents, the actual plan? Most of them end up as decoration on at the reception desk. Ask anyone working in an organization of any size what is the mission, what is the strategy, what is the vision and most of the time you will get a blank stair. It is all too common, but also a tragedy. We give the most vital part of our daily lives to missions and visions we know little about.

A strategy map solves this tragedy.

A strategy map solves this tragedy because it summarizes what are often 25-50 page documents into a one page visual summary of the cause and effect relationships that must be in place for a strategy to work.  We once reviewed a strategic plan for a large urban school district. Forty five pages of beautiful and elegant “we will” statements. However, in all of that prose, there was exactly one sentence on how they were going to achieve their lofty aims – improve reading.

A strategy map adds value to the strategic planning process in five ways:

  1. It identifies the dependencies if the ultimate objective(s) will be met.
  2. It identifies any missing elements. When a strategic objective has no link to core business processes, technology, or funding the probability of failure is high.
  3. It communicates. A one page visual illustration can be used for wall mounted displays, produced as banners and posters for staff, and given to donors so they know the full economic requirements to providing quality training that will produce employment for students.
  4. It identifies project initiatives. These initiatives are often the links to the successful execution of strategy.
  5. It sets the budget requirements. From the elements in the strategy map a budget can be calculated that identifies each component of cost so that the organization can make an effective go-no-go decision.

Recent Posts

  • Key Elements of the Leadership System – Managing Vs. Developing
  • The Leadership System: Power of Purpose
  • Leadership System: The Chief Purpose of Leadership
  • The Leadership System: Perfectly Designed to Get Intended Results
  • The Leadership System – Routines & Processes

Blog Categories

  • Developing Leadership Systems
  • Failure of Leadership Development
  • Leadership System Rules
  • Leadership Systems
  • Mapping Strategy
  • Praxis Solutions
    • Balanced Scorecard
    • Baldrige
    • Lean training
  • Systemic Leadership

The Value of Check Lists

Commercial airplanes take off and land thousands of time each day. Their pilots do so routinely. Yet each time a pilot takes off or lands she does so with a check list. The result is safer air travel for millions of travelers. Surgeons are also finding that check lists saves lives. A check list assures the routine gets done correctly. An Office of Financial Aid began using a check list. The result has been fewer errors, faster processing time, happier students, and happier staff evaluators.

Small Change = Big Impact

One of our clients, an Office of Financial Aid, made a small change to their process of processing financial aid applications. They learned in a lean training that small batches often results in faster throughput. So instead of staff grabbing an arm full of aid application files, they took only ten. They would not go back to get another ten until the ten they were working on were finished. The impact was dramatic. No lost files, no running around asking co-workers if they were working on "John's" file, dramatic drop in errors and rework, higher productivity, higher worker satisfaction, and faster awards of financial aid. Simple change, but major impact.

Lean for Teams

Our Lean for Teams workshop was launched in June of 2014 with a college Advising Office. This engaging and interactive training was a customized specifically the the college. It formed the framework for a four day lean kaizen event the followed immediately.

Does Lean Work in Government?

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is making lean a central part of his reform initiative. From his website: Empower state employees to find efficiencies through greater use of Lean Management. Lean management is an approach that asks those who know best - our front-line employees - to identify strategies to help them serve the people of Washington more quickly and easily. These efficiencies will help us prevent additional cuts to essential services and programs.

Value of a Strategy Map

A strategy map visually communicates the cause and effect relationships that must be in place to successfully execute strategy.

A Board Member States:

If this is where the agency is going and how we are going about it, I am fully committed – and able to talk about it to my peers and potential donors.

Client Testimony

Praxis was very thorough and well organized in their methods for gathering information from a variety of people and sources in our organization to obtain a full and complete picture of our environment.  Their experience in the industry and prior consulting work was very valuable and the final recommendations were thoughtful, meaningful and are valuable to us as we work to improve the efficiency of our organization.

Clay Gehring, Chief Information Officer, Spokane Public Schools

Improving an Office of Financial Aid

Dan facilitated a week long Process Improvement training for our Financial Aid Department.  As a result, our staff have maintained and engaged in a strong focus on process improvement.  Summer is an extremely high processing period as we approach fall quarter at our college.  At this time, because of process improvements, staff are well ahead in awarding aid for students and have surpassed all previous years.

Anne White, Dean of Enrollment Services & Financial Aid

Connecting With Clients

Dan’s ability to connect and communicate with each person on the team is his greatest strength. There were twenty team members from the grants administration and business services groups, a very diverse group, I don't think anyone else could have made the engagement work.

Mason General Hospital – Client Experience

We are now organizing our “nuts and bolts” team with associated workgroups focused on the Baldrige Quality Criteria. Our customer group has already begun our approach to use of social media, now in early deployment
I would highly recommend this offering to anyone seeking Baldrige or even considering a journey to excellence.

Eileen Branscome
Chief Operations Officer, Mason General Hospital

Value of Using a Strategy Map

We are now starting to regularly use the strategy map even at Board Meetings to frame discussions.

Sebastian Koellner, Hopelink - Performance Improvement Manager

ANNOUNCING – BALDRIGE RAPID ACCESS INTENSIVE

Developed in collaboration with the North West's Baldrige alliance member, the Rapid Access Intensive is a high impact intensive designed to accelerate the Baldrige journey. Why wait a year to get the benefit of a Baldrige report when you can accelerate this journey to a few weeks.

Experience With Community Action Partnerships

At Hopelink, we wanted to develop a strategy map and balanced score card, but were not sure how to go about it. Dan and Martin brought a wealth of expertise to the process. I personally appreciated their willingness to be a sounding board for ideas and their enthusiasm for developing structures and visual tools to summarize information.

Sebastian Koellner, Performance Improvement Manager

Experience With Community Action Partnerships

Hopelink is indebted to Martin and Dan for leading us through a process to transform our strategic plan into a strategy map. This new tool makes our strategic plan easily accessible and clear to a variety of external and internal audiences with a deceptively simple visual presentation. After months of work dedicated to developing this map, it has quickly become a much-used and useful performance excellence tool that our leadership refers to on a daily basis.

Marilyn Mason-Plunkett, Hopelink President & CEO

Client Experience

I had the opportunity to observe a series of facilitated exercises conducted by Performance Excellence Northwest. Their unique leadership approach assisted our staff in developing the framework and refining our Baldrige values as we started drafting our first Baldrige application. Their Baldrige Rapid Access approach not only accelerated our application process but improved the quality of that application. I can personally recommend this organization.

Scott Hilburn, President Board of Commissioners, Mason General Hospital.

Winston Churchill


Thrilled Customers

Achieving Excellence

Excellence is born of commitment, intentional learning, hard work, and a burning desire to serve the customer.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Contact Information

Praxis Solutions for Nonprofits
Bellevue, WA 98006
Info@PraxisSolutionsNP.com
(425) 269-8854

Jack Welch on Learning

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

Baldrige in Public Education

Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria has a proven track record of driving comprehensive organizational improvement in public education.

Watch this interview, JoAnn Sternke, superintendent of the Pewaukee School District (PSD), as she reflects on PSD’s receiving the prestigious 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—the United States’ highest honor for quality and performance excellence.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JnraF4DGgY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Baldrige in Healthcare

In the demanding and dynamic nature of Healthcare, Baldrige Performance Excellence has provided a disciplined and structural framework for guiding comprehensive performance. In short, lives are being saved, workers at all levels recognize their role in mission, people want to work for organizations that demonstrate excellence.

Watch David Fox, President of Good Sammaratian Hospital, 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the health care category.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khdal2dKW1k?rel=0&w=560&h=315]