Advanced Dynamics

The Service Diagnostic

THE CHALLENGE

Stimulus spending in response to the Global Financial Crisis has placed pressure on public sector fiscal balances around the world. Reducing budget deficits is often seen as a stark choice between increasing taxes or reducing services. However, in many cases there is an alternative - finding ways to improve productivity through more effective service delivery. Achieving this requires a transformation in the way services are delivered. Advanced Dynamics has developed the Service Diagnostic as a means to enable this transformation.

THE APPROACH

The service diagnostic provides a simple and cost effective way to discover a path to service transformation, and building the capability to maintain the momentum. It is based on coherent, wellproven principles developed by empirical researchers such as W. Edwards Deming, Taiichi Ohno, Elliot Jaques and Ian Macdonald. Importantly, this new methodology is tailored for the specific issues found in service organisations as opposed to manufacturing organisations. See our case study .

OUTPUTS

The most valuable immediate output of the Service Diagnostic is specific actions that enable a transformation in service delivery. The most valuable enduring output is improved capability levels at frontline and middle manager levels.

The diagnostic will :

• Provide a description of the key systems and symbols that drive the current performance of the organisation and propose ways of improving these;
• Identify inefficiencies in the system of organisation and ways to correct them
• Increase understanding of systems and policies that drive counter-productive behaviour and actions to correct them
• Identify what actually matters to customers
• Create a systems map of one core service provided by the organisation
• Quantify "value demand" ( what we are here for) and "failure demand" (the unnecessary load on the service delivery system caused when the work does not meet client needs)
• Identify costs caused by inappropriate measures and propose alternatives
• Clarify waste caused by steps in the process that do not create client value and ways to remove them
• Provide a plan for short-term improvements led by front line staff

KEY PROJECT PRINCIPLES

• Design the organisation from an "outside-in" perspective
• Involve CE and executive team, front line staff and selected middle managers in workshops to facilitate the change
• Empower front-line staff to improve their work

Many of the concepts inherent in this approach are encapsulated in the basic principles of ‘lean’ thinking, although one must not make the mistake of assuming that lean manufacturing “tools” are always appropriate for a service organisation. It is the thinking side of the lean approach that is essential, not the tools themselves. Successfully applying this in a service organisations demands a clear approach to developing new leadership capability at all levels of the organisations involved.

CREDENTIALS

The service diagnostic process is a unique synthesis of several proven approaches used by Advanced Dynamics:

• The "organisational diagnostic" has proven to consistently generate new insight for Chief Executives
• Systemic adaptation of process improvement methodologies such as "6 Sigma" and "Lean" to address the specific needs of service organisations (as opposed to manufacturing organisations) has proven to generate immediate and sustained value when applied properly;
• Advanced Dynamics' "learning by doing" approach, developed for service organisations that feature complex stakeholder interactions;
• Understanding of "action logics" to tailor improvement approaches to the way individuals interpret their world

The design of the Service Diagnostic is tailor-made to meet the organisation's specific circumstances and support the improvement strategy of the Chief Executive.

REFERENCE ORGANISATIONS

• Department of Local Government and Housing (Northern Territory)
• Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand)
• Department of Planning and Infrastructure (Northern Territory)
• Department of Building and Housing (New Zealand)
• Department of Conservation (New Zealand)
• Ministry of Economic Development (New Zealand)
• Department of Housing (NSW)

Please inquire for names of referees