United Nations Global Compact

Success Works recently signed the United Nations Global Compact. The Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

 This means that Success Works will (continue to) uphold the 10 principles of Human Rights, report annually on our progress towards this and promote our commitment to the Global Compact. The Global Compact provides a policy framework for the development, implementation and disclosure of sustainability principles and practices related to its four core areas: human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.

 In signing the Global Compact, CEO Cam Stirling said, “I am confident that our values and the work we do fully align with the principles already. This commitment to the Global Compact formalises our support for those principles and provides a further opportunity for us to advance our commitment to sustainability and corporate citizenship.”

 The principles are:

Human Rights

• Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
• Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.  

Labour

• Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
• Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
• Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and
• Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. 
   

Environment

• Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
• Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
• Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.   

Anti-Corruption

• Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery. 

More information on the Global Compact can be found here: www.unglobalcompact.org

Appreciative Inquiry for Victorian Allied Health Workers

Over the past year Success Works has worked with the Victorian Department of Health to provide training for allied health workers. 138 allied health workers from 61 health organisations have learnt about Appreciative Inquiry and participated in learning circles on topics such as conflict, storytelling and time management.

Appreciative Inquiry recognises that human systems work at their best when they recognise, harness and enhance the best in their people. The process focuses on dreams, strengths, successes, stories and inquiry.

The traditional approach to change is to identify the problem, diagnose the causes and find a solution. The primary focus is on what is wrong or broken. Appreciative Inquiry suggests we look for what works in a situation to identify options for future success and development.

Feedback on the programs was overwhelmingly positive. Participants gained a greater understanding of strength based approaches and the importance of values and self awareness as a core leadership skill: 

“Interesting, educative and gave new perspectives on how to manage work and life.”

 “A journey of self insight and learning to be open to the differences of others and how they may impact on work relationships.”

 “…great to focus on the strengths and build on them. Challenging but the challenge that needs to occur.”

“Fantastic and empowering.”

When asked ‘what is one thing you will change as a result of this training?’ Participants indicated they would change their approach to performance management and would actively use the strengths paradigm within their teams.

Participants all reported they gained a greater understanding of the power of using strength based processes and to support staff to identify their own solutions and their own strengths.

“If someone else comes to you with a problem- don’t try to fix it for them ask “Why is this a problem for you?”

Success Works offers a range of programs on Social Leadership Through the Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter in which participants learn about creative ways to engage, make decisions based on full consultation and work in complex environments through techniques like Circle, World Café, Open Space, Storytelling and much more.

For more information visit Success Works  or contact us on (03) 9946 6800.

Time for a change: Building a 21st century primary health care system

The 2nd Annual Future of Medicare

10th & 11th November 2010, Sydney Harbour Marriott

By Dr Stephen Duns

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted and honoured to be with you this morning. My personal belief is that there are two fundamental aspects of a modern civilised society that lead to social justice – public education and public health. So this is one of the most important subjects about which we could spend a couple of days reflecting, learning, conversing and planning.

This morning I will offer a different perspective on health, based on systems thinking. I will suggest that unless and until we take this perspective we will continue to work really, really hard on the wrong things. It is high time we worked smarter, rather than harder. I will also suggest that when we consider an integrated health system, we need to look beyond the immediate realm of what is considered as health care. We know that health is determined more by a range of social factors than treating illness. Those factors include housing, income security, transport, education, environment, community safety and community connectedness. It is integration at that level that we need to achieve.

Examining the role of a responsive and cost-effective primary health care system

Let’s take a systems perspective – and we have to answer fundamental question: Are we trying to increase health or reduce, or treat, illness? The word “Medicare” would suggest the latter. Certainly the recent so-called reforms are focused on the system of treating illness, rather than health. So let’s take a look at that name – “Medicare”. “Medi” – presumably short for medicine. I looked up the definition and found:

“the art or science of restoring or preserving health or due physical condition,”

So far so good. “restoring or preserving health” at least has a focus on health – but then the definition goes on…

“as by means of drugs, surgical operations or appliances, or manipulations: often divided into medicine proper, surgery, and obstetrics. “

A fascinating distinction between “medicine proper” and surgery, and for some reason obstetrics is excluded from “proper” medicine! But that aside, we do come back to the nub – medicine is about drugs and operations, or manipulations, whatever that might mean. So we quickly descend from health into surgery.

Then there is another definition:

“the art or science of treating disease with drugs or curative substances”

There is some welcome honesty in referring to “art and science”. Anybody who knows a modicum about quantum physics will tell you that any complex adaptive system involves as much art as science, at least in terms of traditional reductionist analytic science. If ever there was a case for non-linearity, emergence, autonomy and self-organisation, it is the complex environment of human health. More of that a little later.

If you’ll indulge me for a little digression there is a fascinating and well documented case about the art of medicine, which demonstrates this idea about the fallacy of cause and effect. One of the earliest and most dramatic modern examples of the effect of a person’s beliefs and expectations on his recovery from a fatal illness in the 1950s. It has since been repeatedly cited in medical and psychology journals, although originally in the Journal of Projective Technique (Klopfer, 1957)

This is the incredible story of a terminally ill cancer patient known as “Mr. Wright”. Mr. Wright had cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments for cancer had been exhausted. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of fluid had to be drained out of his body each day. He was given only two weeks to live.

To download this paper and read more, click here.

Share

Add Comment

How wet are your feet?

I recently had the opportunity for a relaxed conversation with a University Professor who is, it is fair to say, something of a research design guru.

I asked him which is best – quantitative followed by qualitative or qualitative followed by quantitative?

His response was “It depends”!

He went on…

Let’s take the metaphor of an anthropologist. Imagine that the anthropologist has just arrived at a new land he has jumped off the boat and his feet are still wet from the landing. At this stage he knows nothing so a qualitative approach is the only sensible approach. As he gets to understand the lay of the land and the issues for its people, his feet start to dry out, and he could ask some sensible questions of a larger number of people. In that case a quant start, followed by qual to drill down on specific themes that emerge from the quant might be better.

So the answer is: “It depends how wet your feet are!”

I found this very insightful and so thought I’d share it.

Development of the Victim’s Voices DVD

Success Works has been evaluating the Sexual Assault Reform Strategy for the Department of Justice over the last two years.

As part of our evaluation we have interviewed over 80 victim survivors of sexual assault.

With the support of the Department of Justice, Success Works worked with two professional writers, a director and four actors to produce the Victim’s Voices DVD based on our interviews with victim survivors.

We did this because we recognised that the power of the stories that we were hearing from victim survivors would inevitably be ‘watered down’ through the process of report writing. We also felt it was important to give a strong and authentic voice to the victim survivors without breaching confidentiality or our Ethical obligations and requirements.

In order to develop the DVD, we first contacted the Department of Justice Ethics Committee and sought their agreement for the transcripts of the interviews to be read by the writers. This was agreed on the basis that we also sought the permission of the relevant victim survivors. We then contacted 13 of the victim survivors who had been interviewed and 12 agreed for their transcripts to be read by the writers.

The writers developed four characters that do not represent any real person but whose experiences are real. The four characters are:

• Barbara – a 40 year old woman who has experienced a recent sexual assault
• Mary – a young intellectually disabled woman who experienced a recent sexual assault
• Erin – a young woman in a country town who has experienced childhood sexual assault
• Paul – a 38 year old man who experienced childhood sexual assault

Since its production in March 2010, the DVD of the four stories has been shown to the Sexual Assault Advisory Committee (Paul’s story) and to a meeting of senior Government staff and key stakeholders (all four stories). It has also been taken up by the Judicial College of Victoria for training purposes (Erin’s story) and by Victoria Police. The Attorney-General has approved the further development of the DVD for public release.

Success Works has also taken steps to show the DVD to the 12 victim survivors who agreed to participate in this process.

Copies of the Victims Voices DVD are available from the Department of Justice, Sexual Assault Reform Unit.

Chaordic Leadership

Dee Hock, founder of the Visa Corporation has written a delightful and powerful article that describes “Chaordic Leadership”. (Hock, 2000) Central to the concept is the need to focus on the self, and self-awareness as a leader. Hock defines “chaord” as any self-organising, self governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organisation, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behaviour of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order.

The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to lead is to manage self: one’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. We spend little time and rarely excel at management of self precisely because it is so much more difficult than prescribing and controlling the behaviour of others.
However, without self-awareness no-one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of leadership are inescapable.

“It is not making better people of others that leadership is about. In today’s world effective leadership is chaordic. It’s about making a better person of self. Income, power and position have nothing to do with that. In fact, they often interfere with it.” (Hock, 2000)

Chaos—Order—Control can be seen as different states of being and experiencing. We tend to feel safest in the state of order, or for some people, in control. Being out of control is scary if we are looking for predictability. If we have a mechanistic view on organisations, our tendency will be to stay within the realms of order and control, where things are predictable and stable—and where we produce status quo or “more of the same”—which in some cases is exactly what is needed.

Diagram 3: The Chaordic Path
(from Art of Hosting Workbook 2009)

The world and times we live in are, however, neither predictable nor stable and call for more flexibility as “more of the same” solutions are not meeting the challenges. If we are looking for innovative, new solutions we will find them in a place between chaos and order—the chaordic path.

The chaordic path is actually the story of our natural world—form arises out of nonlinear, complex, diverse systems. “At the edge of chaos” is where life innovates, where things are not hard wired, but are flexible enough for new connections and solutions to occur. New levels of order become possible out of chaos.

The art is to stay in the fine balance between chaos and order. Straying too far to either side is counterproductive. On the far side of chaos is chamos or destructive chaos where everything disintegrates and dies. On the far side of order is stifling control—where there is no movement which eventually means death. When we move toward either of these extremes, the result is apathy or rebellion—the very opposite of chaordic confidence. Staying on the chaordic path is where the balance is and where life thrives.

Constructivist Evaluation

Success Works adopts a Constructivist approach to evaluation and to its other social policy work.
Constructivism is a way of understanding the world that is based on the belief that “truth” is not an objectively knowable thing but is individually and collectively constructed by the people who experience it . ₁ As constructivist evaluators we assume that there are many different ways of interpreting or understanding the intent and impact of a policy or program and that to understand a policy or program the evaluator must gather together those understandings from a diverse range of sources. For a constructivist evaluator the truth of the situation is what the people who experience it describe.
Constructivism is a research paradigm that suits a complex world. We start from an understanding that our world, and the programs and policies that exist within it, is made up of a series of complex adaptive systems in which each individual participant and each individual process is in a state of constant action and reaction to each other, so that its overall behaviour and direction is unpredictable. From complex adaptive systems, emergence is the production of new and more effective ways of working that are greater than the sum of the parts. To discover the emergent properties of a system, the evaluator needs to see the overall structure and understand what has been achieved at an overall systems level. Success Works uses a systems analysis and meta-evaluation₂ approaches for this purpose.
As constructivist evaluators we do not assume that we know what the content or impact of a program or policy will be. We listen closely to how it is described by those in a position to know or understand the program or policy. We look for common themes in these constructions and these become the findings in relation to the evaluation.
In constructivist evaluation qualitative research approaches (interviews, focus groups, workshops) are always used and our questions allow the participants to convey their understanding of the program, policy or initiative. Questions are broad and open-ended so that participants can convey their understanding and their meaning of the situation being investigated. We recognise that our backgrounds and age, gender and cultural perspectives will shape our understanding of what we hear, see and feel in our evaluations. We use team based approaches and diverse staff teams to the extent possible to overcome these biases. We also acknowledge that they exist.
We use project/program logic as a key tool in the development of our evaluation frameworks. This is a constructivist approach which seeks to determine the project/program ‘theory’ or ‘hypothesis’ based on the knowledge and experiences of those responsible for the project/program. The “truth” of the logic model is measured through the evaluation based largely on the knowledge and experiences of those involved or in receipt of the project or program.
Findings from our evaluation interviews are presented in terms of patterns and themes. We look for common themes in the interviews and focus groups we conduct. The process of triangulating findings is a critical process when analysing data within a constructivist paradigm, as it enables ‘shared truths’ to be identified. Success Works recognises that, for many evaluations, it is appropriate to consider relevant quantitative data (e.g. survey data, administrative data sets) as another ‘axis’ in the triangulation process; that is, the quantitative data represents a particular perspective on a set of issues. Conceptualising quantitative data in this way allows for a true ‘mixed methods’ approach to evaluation, with an integrated analysis based around critical issues and themes, rather than the research methods themselves. In addition to its role within the triangulation process, quantitative data is also an important source of information for determining the scale and scope of a particular program or policy.

₁ ^{The other major approach to evaluation is positivism or post positivism. These approaches start from an understanding that truth is objectively knowable (positivism) or able to be approximated (post-positivism).}
₂ ^{Meta-evaluation is the evaluation of a number of related programs or policies and identifying findings at a systems level.}

Working with Hard to Reach Groups

As evaluators in social policy areas, Success Works often finds it has to seek out people who are traditionally considered to be ‘hard to reach’ in order to gain their opinions or experiences of a service, program or policy.

Traditionally the ‘hard to reach’ groups have been defined as: people who are homeless; people who use drugs or alcohol; offenders; Indigenous people; culturally or linguistically diverse people; people with mental health issues; people with cognitive impairments; people with disabilities; young people; older people; children etc.

However, in Success Works’ experience, ‘hard to reach’ can also include professional such as general practitioners or lawyers; people with full-time jobs and people who are not members of community organisations.

In thinking about ‘hard to reach’ groups we have also realised that there are two distinct sub-categories who require different strategies: people who are harder to find and people who are harder to engage. Some groups fit into both categories.

Cultural Competence and Cultural Safety

Success Works has been privileged to undertake a number of projects with Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.  In these projects and generally in our day to day work we subscribe to the concept of Cultural Safety.

Cultural Safety is ensuring that we, as consultants, understand and respect the different cultural understanding of the people we are working with and ensure that there is ‘no assault, challenge or denial of cultural identity’(1)  in our work.  More generally, cultural safety is a worldview that recognises the need to overcome cultural biases in our services and institutions in order to ensure that all individuals and communities have equal rights and equitable access to processes and services which are relevant to them.

Cultural safety starts from the standpoint of Cultural Competence.  Cultural competence is about recognising the cultural biases that all of us possess and taking steps to ensure that these biases are clearly acknowledged and that, to the extent possible, they do not get in the way of our practice.  Cultural competence allows one to understand that the way in which we experience and understand the world is only one way in which the world can be experienced and understood.

Culturally competent organisations are ones which:

• Demonstrate an understanding of their own dominant culture, including its implicit biases and assumptions
• Show a positive commitment towards the inclusion of individuals and communities from different cultural backgrounds
• Have knowledge of different cultural practices and cultural experiences and the influence of these on individual and group worldviews
• Are skilled and effective in cross cultural communication.

Success Works uses the following continuum to show the relationship between cultural awareness at the lowest level (the first step to cultural safety) and cultural safety at the other end.  Cultural awareness and cultural competence are both within the control of an organisation.  Cultural safety represents the experience of those who work in, access or use our services:

(1) Robyn Williams (nd) Cultural Safety: What does it mean for our work practice?

http//www.ruralhealth.utas.edu.au/inidigenous-health/Revised CulturalSafetyPaper-pha.pdf

The Success Works Guide to Project Logic

Project Logic as a key process in all of our evaluations. Sometimes Project Logic is also useful for strategic planning or in order to build understanding and consensus around a program or initiative. Project Logic unpacks the logic underpinning the program or project that is being evaluated – not the evaluation itself. The Project Logic identifies ‘what they were thinking when they designed this program or initiative’. In evaluation, the reason for developing a Project Logic is to be clear about the activities, outputs and expected outcomes of the program, particularly the short term outcomes. It is not  possible to evaluate a program based on its long term outcomes (as they are too far away and there are too many other factors that will impede their achievement). Nevertheless, the Project Logic depicts the logical flow from short to medium to long term outcomes. Short term outcomes should be possible to investigate as part of the evaluation. Once identified, the outputs and short term outcomes become the foundation for the evaluation questions. This guide describes each of the components of a Project Logic as we use them at Success

Success Works Guide to Project Logic