WHERE
C3 is a pro-active partnership of 11 organisations spread across the West of England sub-region, partly funded by the European Union through the Equal programme. The partnership, formed in September 2004, is made up of statutory, voluntary, community, social enterprise and co-operative sector organisations.
Rapid self-assessment and action prioritisation process working with the whole staff
The partnership is piloting a range of new business support services and providing expert advice in improving the performance of social economy organisations. C3 aims to influence the range of support services delivered and how they are delivered in the future.
WHY
The C3 Partnership has been trialling a self-assessment workbook, called C3Perform, to help social economy organisations implement a performance improvement system based on the EFQM Excellence Model.
Whilst conducting these trials, we have become aware that not all organisations are suited to a group self-assessment session using the C3Perform workbook, which involves between 2 and 10 people sitting through and assessing their performance against each area of the workbook in a structured discussion. Common reasons for this are that:
- the organisation wants to involve more people in the process,
- the organisation has a tradition of annual away days and wants to link the self assessment process in with this.
In response to these demands, the C3 partnership has developed a workshop format that can involve up to 20 people in a session. We call this the PERform workshop.
HOW
The PERform workshop is designed to involve up to 20 people in an assessment of the organisation’s performance against the 5 ‘enablers’ sections of PERform and one generic ‘results’ sections. It would be possible to involve a larger group as long as additional facilitators were involved. However, we consider that 20 is the optimum number, because group cohesion is compromised in larger groups.
The workshop takes place in a day, over the course of about 6 hours, including introductions, warming up activities, training, lunch and breaks. It is important to put the process in perspective of the organisations situation so it helps to review the progress of the organisation in the preceeding year at the start of the session and then look to the future at the end with the action planning session.
The core principles of this approach are that it:
- Uses a more dynamic and interactive approach than the C3Perform self assessment tool. Where participants move around a large room comparing their performance against 6 criteria written on large sheets and stuck to the walls in order to identify strengths and areas for improvement.
- Involves a diverse group of people from many levels of the organisation so the focus is on what the organisation does (i.e. the enablers) rather than what the way it uses results (which is more of a management concern).
- Involves both assessment and action planning in one session
- Requires the organisation’s leaders/decision makers to take the process forward after the workshop
The process involves three key steps,
- Identifying strengths and broad areas for improvement
- Identifying specific improvement actions from the above
- Prioritising improvement actions by dot voting
In order to set the scene for the day, it is important to provide:
- A good explanation of the model and principles of the C3 approach (based on the EFQM Excellence Model)
- A good explanation of the process for the day, clearly detailing each stage and then checking understanding of this.
- A discussion involving managers about how the process will be taken forward after the day.
- Agreement and discussion of ground rules.
It may also be necessary to fit in with the aims that the organisation has for the day. For example, if the workshop is doen as part of an annual development day strategic day, a review of the previous year’s performance might need to proceed the session.
STEP 1. Identifying strengths and broad areas for improvement (40 minutes)
6 large sheets of paper are displayed on the walls in distinct areas of the room, with the titles of one of the 5 Enablers criteria and one generic results section written on each. The six criteria are Leadership, Policy and strategy, Staff and Volunteers, Partnerships and Resources, Processes Products and Services, Results and Feedback. Short statements and keywords are written underneath each criterion that relate to the statements of C3Perform to provide extra guidance to participants about what to consider.
In small groups of 2 or 3 people, participants spend five minutes at each sheet (criteria) discussing strengths and areas for improvement. Each small group writes each strength on A5 size sheets of card of one colour and each area for improvement of an A5 size sheet of paper of another colour. They leave theses cards on a table beneath the sheets detailing the corresponding criteria.
An example of key words and statements for one of the criteria follows:
Leadership
- Vision mission values
- Organisational structure
- Decision makers engage with staff
- Decision makers engage with customers and partners
STEP 2. Identifying specific improvement actions (90 minutes)
Separate people into three groups and assign two of the six criteria to each group. Give them all of the cards listing areas for improvement and give them 45 minutes to discuss them in more depth. On sheets of flipchart paper, ask them to list specific actions that they would like to propose the organisation consider implementing to address the areas for improvement identified in step 1.
Each group then presents their actions to the whole group, placing their flip chart paper on a wall where everybody can see it.
Questions, concerns and clarification are invited from all participants.
STEP 3. Prioritising improvement actions by voting (30 minutes)
Allocate between 5 and 10 coloured small coloured stickers (sticky dots) to each participant (each must have the same number of stickers, facilitator chooses how many to give according to how many actions there are) and ask them to stick them on whichever actions they think are most important. Explain that they can choose to place all dots on one action if they think it is very important or distribute them in any way they want to between more actions.
Next steps after the workshop
It is important to ensure that the manager or improvement champion develops an action plan following the workshop, and communicates this back to the group. Because of the nature of the voting, the manager/PI champion should consider suggested actions and decide on those that are realistic and viable.
Experiences
We have found that this is a relatively quick process; it does not involve such thorough discussion as PERform does but it has the benefits of involving more people and quickly resulting in an action plan.
The case of Nilaari
One example of using this is with an organisation called Nilaari that provides culturally specific counselling and support to people from the black community concerned about their own, family, of friend’s use of drugs and or alcohol. There are 11 staff and 11 management committee members.
The PERform workshop process was selected because Nilaari have a very strong culture of involving all staff and volunteers in organisational development. The organisation had made significant progress over the previous year on a number of issues such as organisational growth, moving premises, agreeing a three year business plan and wanted to hold an away day to celebrate their achievements and take stock of where they were and plan for the next year.
For this reason the PERform workshop was conducted at an annual organisational development day (called an away day) which aims to involve all staff and volunteers in the organisation’s development and was placed alongside a review of progress over the previous year, which was also facilitated by the C3 adviser.
One key outcome of this process is that people identified that more work was needed to improve the way the organisation collects results. The manager of the organisation requested more support from the C3 adviser to work through the results sections of PERform with other senior managers. This case illustrates how, although the workshop approach is not so detailed in itself, it can lead organisations to more thoroughly implement the performance improvement framework.
Lessons Learnt
Because the workshop involves a diverse cross section of people within an organisation, there is a risk that some people might not be as engaged as others. It is important to identify those people and ensure that they are given additional support if needed to understand and participate.
It is important to identify a champion of the process and work with them to ensure they embrace the principles of performance improvement so that they will take the action plan forward and consider continuing with more in-depth work to improve performance, as was the case with Nilaari.
It must be made clear at the start of the session that the group is identifying suggestions for improvements and not agreeing improvement actions. The manager is responsible for agreeing an action plan following the workshop.
We are looking at the possibility of replacing the key words and short statements with direct questions. The reason for this is that it is easier for people to identify strengths and weaknesses if they are asked a specific question. However, is makes the process more prescriptive so some of the flexibility of the process would be lost.
Transferability
With careful planning to make sure the format of the workshop is sensitive to the clients needs, this is a very transferable method. The sheets of paper listing the criteria and the prompts should correspond the statements for the relevant criteria.
For more information
Please contact Stuart Griffin through the C3 partnership www.c3partnership.org