What to measure and how to measure it: PART 2

Monday 2nd April 2012 – 11:06 AM

In my recent blog on measures and sampling, I said:

“A key principle for the effective use of data is to ensure it’s viewed in context.  By this I mean not comparing one number with another but having sufficient data to analyse properly and doing so in graphical form.  One of the best ways of doing this is using time series data graphs.”

A number of clients have asked me if it’s okay to use sample data and if so, is there a risk of looking selectively and not seeing the big picture or the whole system.

Generally, I wouldn’t use sampled data for the main measures of a whole system.  It’s preferable to use all the data in a specific period to build a time series data chart.  The only exception to this is when it’s impossible to get full data (perhaps due to the IT system or no historical data being available).

In such cases it might be necessary to use a sample, but with caution. At the end of the day, the purpose of measures is to make the system’s performance visible – only looking at a small part is probably ineffective.

We are also interested in seeing if the process looks to be ‘in control’ (variation is randomly distributed about the mean) or if it looks ‘out of control’ (variation not randomly distributed about the mean) and if there is ‘special cause variation’ (factors impacting the system performance in a non random way).

In the case of service systems, there is usually very little true special cause variation. The variation is mostly caused by factors within the system, not external to it.  In contrast to the service sector, manufacturing focus is upon standardising to limit variation, whereas in a service system variation needs to be absorbed and dealt with by the system – and true system performance needs to be visible.

In very high volume transactional systems it can be necessary to summarise the data using daily averages (such as the average end to end time for cases completed on a day).  This can have two effects:  since averages are used variation is less visible, and rather than seeing the variation between cases they show system variation.

Sampling isn’t necessarily wrong but to be meaningful, it’s important that it’s understood in context and if used, that we understand that the sample is sufficiently representative of the whole.

 

Jaime Beckett, Principal Organisational Change Practitioner – jaime.beckett@icecreates.com

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Your Essential Guide: Engaging and Encouraging Breastfeeding Mums

Wednesday 28th March 2012 – 12:58 PM

It’s fair to say recent media stories about breastfeeding may have left some mums feeling confused and conflicted about how best to support their baby. So it’s more important than ever to ensure breastfeeding mums and their families have access to the information and support they need – where and when they need it.

In recent months, our team’s been working with health professionals across the country (in areas including Cheshire, Cornwall and Shropshire) to promote, encourage and normalise breastfeeding. Building on this first-hand experience, here are our top five tips for engaging women around this sensitive issue in a supportive and effective way:

  1. Use a peer-to-peer approach – Our research has shown that women identify with other mums as a credible source of support and advice. Forging links with existing breastfeeding ‘advocates’ in the community will enable you to identify local champions who can drive home the message quickly and easily to their peers.
  1. Avoid information overload – Our insight work also indicates that too much information can be counterproductive. Developing clear, consistent messages structured around choice, reassurance and encouragement is key. It’s also vital to clearly signpost mums to external support services if they need them.
  1. Make it real – Time and time again, we’ve seen that warm (less clinical) language, real life stories and honest, straightforward information from other mums will resonate most strongly. ‘Rachel’s story’ is just one example of how we’ve used video to further empower women to share their experience in their own words.
  1. Make it social – Online forums and social media sharing – including viral video – are powerful communication tools which allow women to share their experiences, have their say and promote the help available locally. Creating content (like viral video) which mums want to share will build momentum and move them towards more positive, long-term behaviours.
  1. Make it sustainable - Sharing knowledge and best practice with internal and external partners is invaluable. For instance, one recent breastfeeding campaign has seen us upskilling breastfeeding peer support workers around the use of social media channels. After building a new, bespoke website for another NHS Trust, we also trained up a team of administrators to update future content and maximise the value of future online conversations.

Empowering women and ensuring they feel they’re being advised and not ‘being told’ what to do is vital to this people-centred approach.

DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION OF THIS BLOG

If you’d like to know more about how these ideas could work for you, contact Sarah Love, Principal Social Marketing Practitioner on 0845 5193 423 or sarah.love@icecreates.com

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Saints and Slimmers – the ICE fitness challenge

Friday 23rd March 2012 – 8:50 AM

It’s always the same… “That’s it, I’m on a diet!”, “I’m joining a gym!” – but we never do. The intention is there, we just can’t get motivated.

There are so many reasons we all want to lose weight and get fitter; weddings, holidays… clothes that used to fit. Equally, there are many reasons for not sticking to it. Everyone’s favourite excuse is temptation, there’s just too much of it. For those that are ‘naturally blessed’ it’s OK, tempt away. But for those less fortunate, temptation = bad.

As behaviour change experts, our team at ICE know that sometimes you have to alter a few things and be 100% committed, in order to sustain the ‘change’. And it’s even more important when your health is concerned.

Recent research by Lancaster University revealed a direct link between physical activity and workplace productivity and with results showing a 20.5% increase in productivity and a 6% increase in satisfaction in the workplace, it’s no surprise that there was an overall body fat reduction of an average 10%.

So, with this in mind and our knowledge and experience of obtaining and maintaining a healthy weight and the importance of a balanced diet and regular exercise, a team of 12 ‘healthy and happy wannabies’ set up the ICE fitness challenge with a hunger for nothing more than a steady weight loss and toned muscles.

As a team, we set ourselves a goal to exercise at least 4 times a week (half hour sessions), whether this is a high impact exercise class, a gruelling work out at the gym or a power walk on our lunch break – we each have a goal and we want to achieve it!

In the first two weeks we have already collectively lost 4 stone 4lb and have completed a total number of 95 exercise sessions including Zumba, running, swimming, cycling and power walks. We have sacrificed chocolate, chips, bread and even our favourite ‘skinny’ lattes!

It’s been no easy journey and it’s only just the beginning – but despite the sweat, tears and the occasional tantrum, we are determined (and maybe a bit competitive!) to stick to this and together we will continue to share, encourage and support each other on this eight month challenge to becoming healthier and happier.

Danielle Dixon, Marketing Practitioner

danielle.dixon@icecreates.com

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Using Social Media to meet the Export Challenge

Thursday 22nd March 2012 – 10:35 AM

Earlier this week I was invited to speak at a UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) ‘Export Challenge’ event.

The UKTI says exporters are 12 times more likely to survive than other businesses and the session was all about inspiring and supporting small businesses to encourage exports and spread into new markets. So it was great to share some thoughts and ideas about how social media could help drive this process.

What’s clear is that most social media marketing doesn’t work nearly as well as it could for many companies. If you’re a business looking to expand further into new overseas markets, it’s certainly easy to jump straight onto social media tactics and channels before considering the fundamental questions: What does your business strategy say? Is your brand ready? How will my social media efforts be integrated with my other marketing activity?

However, engaging customers and generating genuine two-way conversations are vital to building relationships and driving your business forward in new, competitive markets. View the presentation on Slideshare  or download it here to explore how you could make social media work harder for you.

If it sparks any comments or questions, I’d be glad to hear them!

Stuart Jackson, Chief Executive, ICE – stuart.jackson@icecreates.com / +44 (0)151 647 4700

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The power of branding and design for social good

Wednesday 21st March 2012 – 2:26 PM

Paul Wood, Creative Director, ICE

Branding and design can do so much more than help raise awareness of an issue.  It has the power to engage and empower people to change for the better, supporting sustainable behaviour change on a range of key social issues.

 Whether it’s public health, community safety or environmental responsibility, effective design has been integral to so many of the successful social change projects our team has worked on. So we’ve put together our quick guide to help make your design communications work harder to drive meaningful interactions and achieve your strategic objectives.

Download a pdf version of this blog here.


1.    Get ‘people-centred’: We’ve harnessed the principle of  ‘co-creation’ to involve target groups much more closely in the design process. Co-creation sessions with your audiences will enable them to test ideas and you to challenge your assumptions. That results in people-centred design solutions which truly resonate with the groups you need to reach.

2.    Draw on behaviour change techniques: As part of a people-centred approach, it’s essential to appeal to people’s individual desires, motivations and aspirations. So drawing on behaviour change tools and techniques will help you develop more targeted, agile communications – all carefully tuned to target your audiences’ social, political and emotional contexts.

3.    Value ‘the big idea’: Great ideas lie at the heart of great branding, so for us, everything must contain an idea – a big idea. Harness the insight you’ve collected to develop that all important idea and bring your communications together in an engaging and consistent way. It will be something that makes people think, makes them smile, or even reshapes their perceptions of the world.

4.    Harness ‘transmedia’ storytelling: Great branding needs to be adaptable. Telling your story across multiple platforms and formats will broaden engagement and maximise the value and longevity of your budget and resources. Latest ‘transmedia’ techniques will enable you to make the most of current digital technologies to deliver integrated content which come to life in new and innovative ways.

5.    Keep innovating: Continually refining and developing your messaging, channels and imagery will keep your communications agile. That way you can constantly evolve your branding and design – and drive sustainable brand loyalty.

 

Get in touch and we’ll tell you more about how to create an engaging, coherent and adaptable brand.

Contact me Paul Wood, Creative Director, paul.wood@icecreates.com / 0845 5193 423.

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What to measure and how to measure it?

Thursday 15th March 2012 – 9:05 AM

We tend to want to measure things in all walks of life: in business, at home, in sport etc.  We do this for two main reasons.  We want to see how things are going (“great, we are doing better now…”) and we want to be able to predict the future (“okay, we are confident we can meet your request…”).

Sometimes we measure results, such as how many customers’ requests we delivered correctly this week, or how long it took to get our invoices paid.  Sometimes we measure process, such as how long it took to deal with a customer call (‘wrap time’ in a contact centre) or how many applications were received completed correctly.

A key principle for effective use of data is to ensure it is viewed in context.  By this I mean not comparing one number with another but having sufficient data to analyse properly and do so in graphical form.

One of the best ways of doing this is using time series data graphs.  Let’s interpret some data and determine:

  • Is the data predictable, i.e. does it follow a stable trend?
  • If predictable, then we have a good idea of future performance
  • If we’ve changed the system (perhaps introducing a new team), we can see the real effect
  • If we need to improve the system, we may gain insight into where to begin looking

A line graph can show us where things have changed. Using data this way lets us distinguish between ‘normal’ variation and significant change (i.e. when something major has happened such as the introduction of new working practices).

Sometimes a whole year of data is either not available or is too big to handle so the decision on which time period to use needs to be based on what is needed to be meaningful.  Often a month is a reasonable time to give a picture of cyclical changes (although not seasonal changes) but should be the starting point for ongoing measurement that is meaningful, gives insight and helps improve the system.

To deal better with these issues we use a variety of techniques (such as Deming’s Red Bead Experiment) to help our customers make sense of their systems.

Do you want to find out more? Contact me direct: Jaime Beckett, Principal Organisational Change Practitioner – jaime.beckett@icecreates.com

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Making social media work inside organisations

Thursday 8th March 2012 – 12:24 PM

Heather Sewell, Internal Marketing Manager, ICESocial networking within the workplace is a world away from the ‘command and control’ style of leadership and ‘one way’ communications models. However, to gain the competitive edge, the most successful companies are fundamentally starting to readdress these traditional management styles and principles.

Undoubtedly, the growth of less formal, more conversational modes of  communication marks a shift in balance and a perceived ‘loss of control’ for the employer but with this, there are great opportunities to harness employees’ own voice and support more positive, productive working relationships.

One recent survey of companies in the United States identified the major uses of the staff intranet as engagement, collaboration and knowledge management. This underlines the pivotal role of new digital technologies in supporting new internal networks across organisations, thus allowing staff not only to generate their own content but also to find information more easily and connect in new and more meaningful ways.

One great example is BT’s ‘BTpedia’, which is described by the company as “an enterprise-wide corporate wiki tool”. It says that “simplifying and democratising the publication process….unlock[s] a wealth of informal information that is currently excluded from the highly structured and more formal content hosted in our web content management system”.

There are no anonymous postings on the system, so there is a genuine freedom for staff to say what they want whilst also being held accountable for their contributions. This shows how employees within a complex, multi-layered organisation really can generate credible content which is tagged and rated by peers AND complements official communications.

There’s no doubt that the rise of the so-called ‘Generation Y’ is driving this fundamental shift in workplace engagement. Younger employees intrinsically expect more open communications and the ability to generate their own content. However, it would be a mistake to believe social media savvy is confined to this new generation of ‘digital natives’. It’s worth noting, for instance, that the fastest growing segment on Facebook are 55-65 year old females.

So, what are the building blocks for making social media work within organisations?

  • Accept that social networks exist informally and adopt the mindset that you can’t control them, but you can embrace them.
  •  Yes, social media tools like Yammer and SharePoint may support more effective engagement. However, avoid the tendency to focus on the tools first – concentrate on what they allow people to do. Is it about supporting specific project-based tasks, developing more effective one-to-one communications or creating specialist professional networks?
  • Coach and mentor your team as internal social media communicators. Remember, everyone is at a different level (not necessarily related to their age!) and you can support your ‘early adopters’ to cascade their skills and knowledge more widely, and drive new innovative new structures which impact positively on the business as a whole.

Heather Sewell, Internal Marketing Manager, ICE

 

What do you think? What would you add?

 

Heather Sewell, Internal Marketing Manager, ICE – heather.sewell@icecreates.com

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Supporting sustainable efficiencies: An Essential Guide in a new Policing Landscape

Wednesday 7th March 2012 – 1:48 PM

The public election of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) later this year comes amid fervent debate around resourcing and the impact of ever-decreasing budgets on frontline policing services.

According to the Home Office, the stated aims of the PCCs are to cut crime, ensure community needs are met and make a difference to the lives of the electorate they represent. As well as consulting the public to set policing priorities, they will also hold the local Chief Constable accountable for the performance of the force.

But the question is; how will they go about doing this? How will their success be measured? And how will the public recognise a sustainable difference in their communities?

In order to make the service better you need to spend more time preventing and solving crime but wait; this means you need more resource surely? Well, perhaps not. The amount of time police forces spend on paperwork, chasing things which are not their remit and meeting arbitrary targets is time away from the value-added work of prevention and solution.

Drawing on our proven SO Change (Social + Organisational Change) approach to simultaneously driving efficiencies AND supporting sustainable social change at the heart of communities, we’ve developed some key pointers for improving services:

  1. Be clear about purpose: Is it about preventing and solving crime or filling in forms and meeting arbitrary targets?
  2. Understand the demands that are placed on the force: How many demands are chasing repeat calls or calls which are not really for the service?
  3. Get to grips with the response: How much time is lost before an officer gets to the scene of a crime, and how much time is spent in meeting targets instead of solving crime?
  4. How does the force integrate? Consider your working relationships with the full range of other organisations, agencies and partners. Employ people-centred engagement and communications to ensure they work seamlessly together rather than pull against each other.
  5. Where is the true learning in the force? Take a systemic approach to align the total service, to ensure it meets its ‘true purpose’ and isn’t just about ticking boxes and meeting targets.

We’re currently working with many complex organisations to help them align themselves to their true purpose and understand the things that get in the way of them doing the good job they are capable of.

Download a pdf version here

To discuss how we could help you embed new ‘business as usual’ processes which are capable of delivering better outcomes, contact our Organisational Change team – Jaime Beckett, 0776 463 5472 / Jaime.beckett@icecreates.com

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The Government’s Work Placement Scheme: Where’s the informed debate?

Thursday 1st March 2012 – 4:56 PM

The last week has seen a fair bit of debate going on about the Government’s Work Placement Scheme, which is aimed at 16–24 year olds on JSA (Job Seekers Allowance) and is intended to get unemployed youngsters back into work.  Controversy is bubbling up from the Right to Work campaign – amongst others – claiming that the scheme isn’t really voluntary.

I’m intrigued that most of the debate seems to revolve around whether ministers are telling the truth and if it’s really a ‘slave labour’ scheme.  There seems to be little debate on the true effectiveness of the scheme.  If its purpose is to help reduce unemployment in 16-24 year olds, I’d pose a few questions:

  • How is the scheme’s performance measured?
  • What other initiatives have been considered?
  • What is the root cause of unemployment (in this age group)?
  • How does this scheme address these root causes?
  • What is the perception of the employer towards the initiative?
  • How is the programme tailored to meet individual needs?
  • Who would do the work if the scheme didn’t exist?

Reports state that some 34,000 people have been on the scheme between January and November 2011.  So what are the results looking like?  Was there a trial or experiment to prove its effectiveness before its nationwide launch?  The list of questions is endless.

At ICE, we work with organisations to help them change and improve the way they work.  When this involves large scale changes, i.e. the sort of changes that impact on customers and people in the work (their roles, their jobs and their lives) we usually experiment to prove or disprove a concept.

After all, most changes start off as a theory and we don’t want to end up with proverbial egg on our faces if a theory doesn’t turn out to deliver quite what we expected.  (Ever heard of the law of unintended consequences?)

Experimenting also lets us engage with many stakeholders across our client organisations and understand the worries, fears and likely resistance that we will encounter.  We don’t want to deliver just change, we want to deliver improvement – better for everyone.

So… if the Government’s Work Experience Scheme is designed to make things better, my question is: where is the informed debate around the questions that matter?

Jaime Beckett, Principal Organisational Change Practitioner – jaime.beckett@icecreates.com

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Your Essential Guide: Transforming young people’s sexual behaviours

Wednesday 29th February 2012 – 3:51 PM

According to the Health Protection Agency, STIs are more common among young people than any other group. 16-24s represent only 12% of the UK population, but they account for more than half of all new STIs diagnosed and 65% of new chlamydia diagnoses. Yet they are also the least likely group to access services.

So can you overcome barriers to access and support sustainable behaviour change in this challenging area? Some key trends and tactics have emerged from our one-to-one work in the heart of communities….

 

  1. Make young people integral to the intervention – We’ve found that in order to ‘nudge’ positive changes in behaviour and realise a quantifiable shift of sexual health outcomes, it’s essential that sexual health services are appropriately targeted and designed specifically with young people at their heart – with full participation from the young people themselves.
  2. Move away from clinical settings – Provide flexible services in comfortable, non-traditional settings, at a time and place to suit young people. For instance, meeting 18-24 year olds ‘on their own turf’ (such as pubs, clubs and sports groups) has been essential to our chlamydia screening programme with one NHS Trust, as it’s allowed target groups to gain access to information informally without necessarily seeing a health professional. 
  3. Use a peer-to-peer approach – Enlisting young people themselves to help deliver sexual health services can be transformational. Not only will peer groups help reduce the stigma of accessing services but they instinctively use language which young people know and understand. This also lessens the prospect of individuals feeling they’re being judged or preached to.
  4. Keep messaging clear and straightforward – It sounds obvious but brief, targeted communications are essential to drive home key messaging and avoid information overload. Our research for one Strategic Healthy Authority also highlighted that word of mouth was a primary form of communication for young people, particularly females.
  5. Tap into new technologies – More than any other age group, young people access information ‘on the go’, so use digital technologies to target messaging and make it as easy as possible for your audiences to atively engage with you where and when they choose. For example, we’ve successfully used discrete ‘easyscreen’ text messages services to deliver test results and provide tailored tips, reminders and signposting.

 

download a pdf version of this blog here..

 

 

If you’d like to know more about replicating this proven approach and making it work for you, contact our Director of Health & Lifestyle Services, Simon Dudman on 07740 252144  / simon.dudman@icecreates.com 

 

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