Situation
Our client was a Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) in Ontario. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care was looking to address structural issues in Ontario’s health care system to improve the accessibility, integration, and consistency of patient care. As such, the LHIN needed to prepare to integrate the regional Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) into its operations, so as to be able to take on the new responsibilities for delivering the home care and community services that the CCACs currently provided.
Within this context, the LHIN was looking for assistance in satisfying the following objectives:
- An assessment of current organizational cultures (and subcultures) at the LHIN and the CCAC, incorporating a validated and reliable assessment tool;
- Establishment of an accepted approach for creating the desired future state culture of the new organization;
- An approach to assessing the gap between current and desired future cultures at the LHIN and CCAC;
- The development of an implementation plan to bridge the gap; and
- The provision of recommendations to support implementation of the plan.
Requirement
Schroeder & Schroeder was commissioned to assist with the achievement of the desired objectives. More specifically, the requested deliverables included the following:
- An assessment of the LHIN and CCAC to understand common cultural themes, capabilities and opportunities from both organizations
- A staff survey to involve the broader staff and seek their input on what is important to them in the workplace
- The use of the pre-work and information to facilitate up to two sessions with the senior team and management to promote a positive, shared future desired state for the organizational culture of the new LHIN organization
- The development of a common vision and goals using the strengths of both the LHIN and CCAC to inform the new identity for the organization
- Confirmation of the new, desired culture and that the associated language/terminology is understood
- Discussion of structures and processes to guide Board and staff towards achieving the tenets of the new vision
- The elements of a strong corporate culture and delineation of the principles to guide the ‘leading practices’ in the work environment and recommendations for next steps
- Capacity-building and training sessions to foster a new culture and promote a healthy organization
- Advise on an internal and external communications approach to involve the broader staff on informing/explaining the cultural attributes/expectations
Challenges
The main challenges we faced on this project included:
- A very tight timeline, given the pending amalgamation target date
- Participation of all stakeholders
- Development of a common language and framework to have meaningful conversations and outcomes
- Presentation and discussion of unexpected results
Actions
To address the requirements above, our consultants performed the following tasks:
- Assessment of current organizational cultures – conducted an assessment of current organizational cultures at the LHIN and the CCAC, incorporating a validated and reliable assessment tool. This included:
- An assessment of the LHIN and CCAC to understand common cultural themes, capabilities and opportunities from both organizations
- A staff survey to involve the broader staff and seek their input on what is important to them in the workplace
- Design of the approach to developing the desired culture – established an accepted approach for creating the desired future state culture of the new organization. This included:
- The use of the pre-work and information to facilitate up to two sessions with the senior team and management to promote a positive, shared future desired state for the organizational culture of the new LHIN organization;
- The development of a common vision and goals using the strengths of both the LHIN and CCAC to inform the new identity for the organization;
- Confirmation of the new, desired culture and that the associated language/terminology is understood;
Also developed an approach to assessing the gap between current and desired future cultures at the LHIN and CCAC. This included a discussion of structures and processes to guide Board and staff towards achieving the tenets of the new vision
- Development and coaching around and implementation plan – developed an implementation plan to bridge the gap between the current and desired cultures. This included an identification of the elements of a strong corporate culture and delineation of the principles to guide the ‘leading practices’ in the work environment and recommendations for next steps.
Also provided coaching around the implementation of the plan, including:
- Capacity-building and training sessions to foster a new culture and promote a healthy organization;
- Advise on an internal and external communications approach to involve the broader staff on informing/explaining the cultural attributes/expectations.
- Preparation of a final report and presentation – produced a written report and presentation including for use by the senior team of the LHIN along with a final presentation
Results
Through the work conducted, Schroeder & Schroder was able to help by providing:
- The basis of a structure for understanding current cultural environments and linking this to leadership and management team expectations
- A focused fact-base set of information
- A clear articulation of cultural issues to: sharpen the focus, provide a consistent frame of reference across the LHIN’s and CCAC’s leadership and management team(s), and provide the conditions for a thorough discussion of cultural shaping issues and potential next steps
- Facilitation and guidance for the 2 workshops to ensure productive discussions and an effective use of leadership and management teams’ time
- The basis for applying creative thinking to set appropriate cultural shaping and “business performance” goals – including the “discovery” of new ideas and insights, along with team building by the LHIN’s and CCAC’s leadership and management team
At the conclusion of the project all the objectives had been achieved, and the client was highly satisfied with the deliverables and the value added by Schroeder & Schroeder Inc. The combined LHIN and CCAC leadership team had:
- Arrived at a “consensus” on the current cultural situation,
- Identified specific areas of uncertainty for future resolution,
- Accepted the conclusions and recommendations, and
- Developed an agreement on high level potential next steps