3. What ways of working, skills and partners do you use to meet those needs?
In my previous post, I discussed the development of a mission statement. It’s crucial to understand the needs and opportunities you can help the people you serve, but equally important is to recognise your audience’s significant role in the impact you’re creating for and with them. Whether you’re part of a strategy, finance, human resources, engineering, or frontline team, your audience’s involvement is critical.
The principles that underpin how you work and the experience that the people you serve will get are of utmost importance. These principles shape your work andplay a significant role in gaining the confidence of those you serve.
Take Snook’s: “Human-centred, Live & agile, Open & inviting, Contextualised and Designed for impact”. Policy Lab summarises how it supports the government in developing policy, showing how it works and its impact at each stage.
The ways of working you put into practice show how you will build and maintain your relationship with the critical groups of people you serve and the type of service they will get.
What dedicated support will you provide, and on what basis? What tools will you provide that enable them to solve issues themselves so they don’t need to come to you systematically for your help? What skills development will you help them with so they can do work you would have previously done for them?
How will you maintain those relationships? What will you dedicate for 121s with your key stakeholders so they can give feedback on how well your team is doing and what needs to be improved, i.e. 360s? What will be facilitated in a more group-based way where you can share what the team is doing and get feedback like show & tell? These processes are crucial for continuous improvement and maintaining strong relationships.
Once you’ve developed this, the focus shifts to the skills your team needs to grow and the internal and external partners you should collaborate with to create that impact for the groups of people you serve. This collaborative approach ensures that everyone feels included and part of a team working towards a common goal.
They may be partners who provide the infrastructure you need — data, technology or spaces — or provide complementary skills — organisational development, finance, service design, etc. In this case, your next step is to develop collaborative value propositions, or service offers to the organisation based on what a set of teams can provide.
You may also want to state what challenges/missions you will focus on. If your team is focused on an issue like the environment, then saying what organisational mission you’re supporting will help. The Innovation Unit focuses on creating impact, reducing inequalities, and transforming systems, which must influence how it works and what work it chooses to do. If you’re a corporate support team, you might be supporting more than one of the organisation’s missions and instead focusing on how it delivers them.
5. What impact did you have on the groups of people as a result of the above
When you’ve brought the above insights together, you can describe the positive impact you will create on these audiences. The effect should show how you meet people’s needs in a way that brings the best out of your skills and reflects the values they want your work to reflect. It should mix the functional, measurable and emotional impact you have, leaving your audience feeling hopeful and optimistic about the outcomes.
If you’re doing it at an organisational level, you might instead describe it as a social contract. It might be you’re more of a support team, in which case example impacts could be:
- You might enable senior leaders to work well together to develop strategic solutions that help increase the impact on cross-cutting issues from your organisational strategy in a way that visibly improves the lives of residents.
- You might enable the organisation to understand the needs & strengths of its communities in a way that helps better work with them to solve problems.
- You might help the organisation and its anchor institutions increase the level of investment they secure to increase the impact on the critical borough outcomes.
Suppose you’re an agency like the Innovation Unit. In that case, you will outline what you do best: “We grow and scale the boldest and best innovations that deliver long-term impact for people, address persistent inequalities, and transform the systems surrounding them”. Compare that to Future Gov’s: “We support organisations with digital transformation, service design and community development, building on the best places to organise for change and radically improve outcomes for communities in the 21st century”. It’s also essential to describe the context in which you’re creating that impact so people can understand your theory of change. Policy Lab’s slide deck is powerful, showing how it makes an impact.
