Minney.org Limited

Successful delivery of service improvement depends on knowing what is actually happening, and making decisions using evidence (often termed Performance Management or Performance Improvement). All too often decisions are taken based on assumptions or suppositions, and audits measure things that nobody thinks are important.
My rapid assessment process has been used early in a number of service transformation projects, both to motivate and engage staff, and to assess the direction and progress of a project and any changes needed, early enough to make decisions which make a difference.

When making a change in a system as complex as UK health service (whether a single department, or a whole region), getting the resources right both in terms of investment and in workforce can be quite a challenge. Moreover there can be more than one solution, for example more lower cost staff or fewer higher-cost.

Knowing what you want to achieve and how to get there is vital to any project: but most people already do that. So how come so many projects fail to improve service, or worse, fail altogether?

Many public service changes have little basis in evidence. Their success (or otherwise) does not appear to depend on how 'good' the policy itself is, but rather on how it has been implemented. This relies on staff attitudes and relationships.
My research falls into a number of broad categories: finding out what is currently happening; what people think about it; and what people think it will mean.