We offer a variety of ways that organizations or collaborative groups can explore new results-focused approaches and take first steps before making a commitment to long-term or large-scale change.
Strategy Mapping
A strategy map is typically developed in an early stage of building a balanced scorecard. However, a strategy map provides great value on its own as a tool for creating an organizational or collaborative strategy, making it a “first step” to improve strategy management without the need for a full commitment to an integrated data-driven system. Strategy maps provide a clear path to building on organizational or community assets and focusing policies, services, and improvement efforts to achieve desired outcomes. Strategy maps are powerful communication tools to ensure that all participants, from managers and employees to external partners, understand their roles in the strategy and how they contribute individually and collectively to achieving desired outcomes.
Best Practice Comparisons
We help clients identify opportunities for improvement by assessing their existing systems to determine how they compare with best practices. Our range of tools and models includes guided self-assessments, high-level surveys of systems or governance processes, and intensive evaluations. Best practice comparisons include:
- Performance Management System Survey to assess an overall performance management cycle or any major subsystems, from performance planning, to performance budgeting, to performance monitoring and reporting, to performance-based decision making.
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- Public Performance Reporting Review to determine how well public reporting (in print or online) meets best practice guidelines such as those we worked with the Governmental Accounting Standards Board to develop, and to determine ways to make public reporting more effective.
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- Community Engagement Roles Assessment to determine roles residents and stakeholders play, and how they can take on more roles or be better supported, to make community engagement more effective and increase the energy people bring to improving their community.
- Effective Community Governance Evaluation to compare existing government or community practices against best practices of the Effective Community Governance Model, to determine opportunities to better focus government or collaborative efforts on results people want and need.
Training Programs and Workshops, Online and In Person
We offer a variety of training programs and workshops in the methodologies we use with organizations and communities. An introductory program can help determine if a particular methodology is right for your organization or collaborative group, or how a methodology might be tailored to your needs. Our workshops help participants take first steps by producing early working products useful for new strategies, systems, or practices. We can deliver training and workshops online for significant savings in engagement costs, or in person at a client’s site.