Frustration

Apparently being frustrated is a normal part of the systems thinking process, which is good because that means I'm doing really well. After collecting demand in the Hub for 2 months it turns out we're doing it wrong and need to start again. I'm keen to get this right so with Kim, Nusrat and Matt's help we're starting again. It's not completely wasted (we have learned some things from it) but it's not authentic enough to draw any definitive conclusions from. Our systems thinking colleague (who is genuinely very helpful) has pointed out that we were coding the data too early and the help desk were (through no fault of their own) squeezing the demand into our categories and subcategories rather than accurately recording it in the customer's own words. This I get, and like I said, we're determined to get it right, so we're starting the process again. This time we aren't getting the help desk to categorise but simply getting them to record the following information a spread sheet:

• ID number
• date
• time
• method (face to face, email, phone)
• who (student, staff, employer)
• demand (verbatim - or as good as)
• our response
• whether this was us solving it, passing it on (to someone else) or passing it back (to the customer)

We've also realised we need to collect demand at all points of transaction simultaneously - previously we had hoped to keep things simple by getting the collection right in the Hub first and only then rolling it out to other parts of the Service. Instead we're now going to try and collect it in all parts of the Service at once, at least the ones that are customer (student) facing, so that's all staff involved in:

• the Hub
• appointments (guidance and feedback)
• experience related activity - volunteering, Leicester Award, internships, enterprise, internships and Unitemps

Other points of contact are the curriculum (although that's mostly staff contact) and employers (employer contact), so we're going to leave those be for a while. Also, given the pressures on the Service at the moment we're just going to start with volunteering and Leicester Award (although I haven't told them this yet!) - this will involve all staff in these teams collecting demand for a couple of weeks. Once this is done we'll sit down with our systems thinking colleague again and properly analyse the demand.

So it feels a bit like we're going round in circles but unless we get this beginning bit right we'll be working off skewed data. So far we're still on stage 2 of check - so plenty more still to do. I did ask when the frustration stops and it feels like we're making progress - there's no definitive answer to this but I hope it's soon! One thing that's obvious is that whilst we're not lacking enthusiasm (although, to be honest, that does wane occasionally) we are lacking expertise. In principle the approach is simple, but in practise its easy to get it wrong and end up barking up the wrong tree.

Onward and upward!

about.me pages

I've been meaning to blog about this (and a lot of other things besides) for a while. If you've not yet got an about.me page I think you should. My first reaction when I saw it was "why would I need one of those?", but having used it for a while I think it's really useful. I've had mine for about a year now and I started putting it on my work signature about 6 months ago. I used to put my blog URL on my signature but since I've been blogging less that was looking a little redundant. I know colleagues that put their twitter address (bit risky) or their LinkedIn address (bit boring) on their signatures, but about.me seems like a good alternative. You can create a good looking page very easily (not that mine's great yet) pulling together all your social networks into one place. You can see mine here, and if I wasn't using a dynamic views template on Blogger I could embed it in this post or on a page or in the layout. There's a really good iPhone app too (hurry up with the Android one!).

I really like the way you can pull in loads of different pages into one space and get a really neat preview on the page (although does anyone else find that the Twitter and Blogger previews aren't quite up to date?). I've not added my Facebook page because it says "Adding Facebook will allow visitors to your about.me page to see all of your recent friends, photos, and status updates, even if they have limited access on Facebook". Which I don't want, but I have added Twitter, Blogger, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+ (although you do need to be a bit careful about bringing everything together in one place).

I was reminded about all this yesterday when I (along with every other user on the planet) got an email update about them going independant again (AOL bought them out a few years ago) In the email they describe their commitment to be "the best personal identity service on the web", which they may well be.

Stuart Johnson
Deputy Director
Career Development Service
University of Leicester
www.le.ac.uk/careers
http://about.me/stujohnson

Systems thinking next steps

I feel like I'm going round in circles.

A quick brain dump following a couple of systems thinking meetings, including one with the Systems Thinking Intervention Manager and one with my boss and 4 other members of the team.

• We've revised (and hopefully finalised, our purpose - "Help me get the graduate work or further study that I want" (the '"that I want" bit is quite brave - we might revisit that bit)
• We need to think about data that we have to verify our assumption that students who engage with us early are more likely to gain graduate work or graduate study
• As part of our demand capture we need to record actions taken and whether or not the demand was 'one stop', 'passed' on' or 'passed back'
• We need to be careful that our codifying of data doesn't loose the richness and need to be particularly careful to ensure that demand is captured in the customer's own words (not our interpretation to fit our neat categories)
• We need to look at the last 2 months of demand capture more carefully to infer what matters to customers and therefore determine what we should measure
• We need to get the whole team on board with this

More to follow - I bet you're finding this fascinating

Systems thinking summary - check, plan, do

I've just found this helpful summary of what systems thinking is and I've copied and pasted it below. You can find the original on the University's system thinking pages, there are also some pages on containing information and resources from last week's Why systems thinking conference (that I blogged about here).

We've done 1 and 2 of check but there's still plenty more to (plan and) do...

Check

This involves the following stages:

1. Identifying purpose of the system (e.g. admissions) from the student's perspective ('Make me a student')
2. Analysing demand, e.g. value demand - 'I want to find out more about a course' and failure demand - 'I can't apply online', to identify what matters to the student
3. Looking at our capability to respond to that demand
4. Studying the flow of work; identifying value work and wasted work (e.g. duplication, handoffs)
5. Identify what are the system conditions which prevent us from doing value work (e.g. process design, IT system, training)
6. Look at the thinking behind the system conditions

Plan

This includes:

1. Identifying the value steps (against what matters to a student)
2. Identifying new operating principles and measures

Do

This involves an experiment. The team who did the check will take a small number of students out of the current system, and using the newly identified operating principles will try and test new ways of working, solving problems along the way. The experiment allows a clean flow of work to be established. More will be rolled into the experiment and tried and tested. The experiment allows us to be clear about what capacity is required for a new way of working, what resources, roles and structures. At this point decisions are made about further roll-in.

Purpose

Systems thinking requires you to define the purpose of the service in the customers own words. Here's my attempt at refining our original stab.

"Advise and support me to develop the skills and experience I need to gain graduate work or study"

Update

We've now simplified the purpose to:

"Help me get the graduate work or further study that I want"