Change Interventions

2021 ◽  
pp. 204-219
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Organizational Change ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Behavioral Health ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Transition Management ◽  
Group Interventions

Several generic organizational change interventions, including team building, conflict management, and role clarification, can be used in human service organizations. The image exchange is useful in multidisciplinary settings, where, for example, behavioral health, substance abuse, and job development staff groups each have an opportunity to share how they see their group and all the others. Results are discussed to clarify misconceptions and resolve interdisciplinary conflicts or disagreements. Transition management can be helpful when a new manager comes in to work with an existing team. Structured questions are asked in advance to the new manager and the team. Results are discussed in a workshop setting. Agreements are made regarding how they can work together effectively. Large group interventions, involving up to hundreds of people, can be impactful at the community level, where a variety of stakeholders can meet in a workshop setting and discuss issues and visions to generate common understandings.

Organizational Change for the Human Services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Change Process ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Change Leadership ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Arc Model ◽  
Organizational Culture Change

This book presents an evidence-based conceptual framework for planning and implementing organizational change processes specifically focused on human service organizations (HSOs). After a brief discussion of relevant theory and a review of key challenges facing HSOs that create opportunities for organizational change, a detailed conceptual framework outlines an organizational change process. Two chapters are devoted to the essential role of an organization’s executive or other manager as a change leader. Five chapters cover the steps of the change process, beginning with identifying a problem or change opportunity; then defining a change goal; assessing the present state of the organization (the change problem and organizational readiness and capacity to engage in change); and determining an overall change strategy. Twenty-one evidence-based organizational change tactics are presented to guide implementation of the process. Tactics include communicating the urgency for change and the change vision; developing an action system that includes a change sponsor, a change champion, a change leadership team and action teams; providing support to staff; facilitating the development and approval of ideas to achieve the change goal; institutionalizing the changes within organizational systems; and evaluating the change process and outcomes. Four case examples from public and nonprofit HSOs are used to illustrate change tactics. Individual chapters cover change technologies and methods, including action research; team building; conflict management; quality improvement methods; organization redesign; organizational culture change; using consultants; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice; capacity building; implementation science methods; specific models, including the ARC model; and staff-initiated organizational change.

Challenges and Opportunities

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-33
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

Human service organizations are faced with environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The COVID-19 pandemic, other healthcare challenges, expectations for evidence-based practice usage, and racial justice are vivid examples. Clients and communities deserve effective services delivered by competent, compassionate, and committed staff members. Taxpayers, donors, philanthropists, policymakers, and board members deserve to have their contributions used to deliver programs that are effective and efficient. All these forces create demands and opportunities for organizational change. Planned organizational change can happen at the level of a program, a division, or an entire organization. Administrators and other staff will need complementary skills in leading and managing organizational change. Staff deserve opportunities to have their unique competencies used to achieve organizational goals. Organizational change involves leading and mobilizing staff to address problems, needs, or opportunities facing the organization by using change processes that involve both human and technical aspects of the organization.

Substance abuse in Hawaii: Perspectives of key local human service organizations

1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth E. Waitzfelder ◽  
Charles C. Engel ◽  
Fred I. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Service Organizations

Results-oriented versus Process-oriented Human Service Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Implicit Beliefs ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Process Oriented

This chapter explains the ARC principle of being results oriented versus process oriented. The results-oriented principle requires that human service organizations evaluate performance based on how much the well-being of clients improves. The principle addresses deficits in service caused by the conflicting priority of evaluating performance with process criteria such as the number of clients served, billable service hours, or the extent to which bureaucratic procedures such as the completion of paperwork are followed. Results-oriented organizations are described in detail, including case examples from decades of organizational change efforts by the authors in human service organizations. The chapter documents the importance of results-oriented approaches and underlying implicit beliefs to help the reader understand how mindsets and mental models shared among organizational members influence results-oriented approaches and effectiveness in practice. Supporting research, including feedback and goal-setting research are highlighted.

Improvement Methods for Human Service Organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-291
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Evidence Based Practices ◽  
National Implementation ◽  
Fund Development ◽  
Practice Implementation

A number of methods for improving organizational operations are becoming more common in human service organizations. Capacity building typically addresses enhancing management systems capacity in areas such as strategic planning, information systems, and fund development. Benchmarking and best practices are tools that can be used at the level of the entire organization or for specific service delivery practices to search for models that can be adapted to one’s own organization. Implementing evidence-based practices, known broadly as implementation science, is a very common organizational change challenge for human service organizations these days. Formal evidence-based practice implementation methods for human service organizations include the exploration, adoption/preparation, implementation, and sustainment model and the work of the National Implementation Research Network. Organizational learning and learning organization principles are become increasingly better known in human service organizations and actually represent an arena of organizational change that can help organizations develop ongoing methods for continuous improvement.

Organizational Change

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Change Readiness ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Or Manager ◽  
Evidence Based Model ◽  
Change Efforts

This article presents an overview of the field of organizational change as it applies to human service organizations (HSOs). It offers definitions, conceptual models, and perspectives for looking at organizational change and notes common reasons that organizational change efforts fail. The article takes the perspective of an agency executive or manager who has the responsibility for initiating and implementing a planned organizational change initiative. It offers a comprehensive, evidence-based model for tactics to use and steps to take, from assessing change readiness and change capacity to institutionalizing and evaluating change outcomes within the organization. Common change methods, including those particularly relevant to HSOs, such as implementation science, the use of consultants, and change efforts which can be initiated by lower-level employees, are reviewed A research agenda, with particular attention to change tactics, is offered.

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