Ricki's Profile

Definitely a tough one – perhaps instead of looking inwards to start with, ask yourself WHY the government is implementing these changes…what is the outcome they are hoping for? In other words, look at your future from the eyes of your funder, then figure out some possible scenarios and identify how your strategy would play into each of these scenarios. That may lead you to identifying some projects that could differentiate your network from others.
So my takeaway message is, think from the perspective of your funders (talk to them, read everything they write and post, try and get underneath their strategy and it may change the way you think about your own strategy

The customer has to see the benefit of seeing what they may consider to be a less important person. If the triage adds value to them (eg they have more time to tell their story, have their feelings acknowledged etc) there is a greater chance of them seeing value in the interaction

I empathize as I have a similar challenge, albeit in a different country and different ‘system’. The only strategy I have been able to come up with (which comes at a cost to my organization) is to ‘play’ in the current volume based world and invest in research/gathering evidence on how the system could better support people and funders through value-based contracting. It hasn’t yet paid off in a tender (most of my funding is tender based) but it has paid off in terms of positioning and advocacy which I hope results in changes to tendering/contracting in the future. I have been on this path for 5 years now and am only starting to see glimmers of hope – so it is a long game, not a short one

I work for an Australian organization that provides hospital substitution services in the community – and we had to (and continually have to) demonstrate the benefits to governments and hospitals (Australian public hospitals are taxpayer funded). To be honest the best success we have had is where a hospital is reaching the point where it would have to invest in new beds – and we show the cost of community based care is less than the capital cost – or where we have done some pretty interesting funding models such as a Social Impact Bond which sees us take some of the risk (ie on readmission rates eg). Perhaps you could demonstrate to your funders that you can manage growing healthcare needs at a lower cost, or delay capital expenditure by substituting home care for hospital care?

I invested in a organizational psychologist to design our recruitment process – which takes a candidate about 3 hours and consists of a values and behavioural survey, a telephone interview, a role play, a written exercise, a self reflection task and an interview – all for a job paying around $40k USD. Curiosity, while not called that in our process, is one of the key attributes we look for (in addition to collaboration, accountability and ability to work independently). This investment is, in my opinion, the reason for our success. I would be happy to share the process we went through to identify the key attributes and the process itself if you feel it would be helpful, just email me ricki.smith@acna.org.au

A tough question! My personal belief is that while it is good to be able to give feedback to others, it is up to them to take that feedback and do something with it. So my focus with 360 feedback is what am I learning that will help me be more effective; what are my direct reports and my peers saying about me, and what can I do with that information. Whether you participate or not is your call, but I do wonder what you may be missing out on in terms of your own development?