Not meeting your goals? Use a value network

This article was written by Basil J. White and Beth A. Martin. Basil is a policy analyst for a US federal cabinet agency; Beth is an adjunct instructor and user experience (UX) practitioner.

All organisations have goals, and whether we succeed or fail in reaching them is usually the result of a complex interplay between different agendas, plans, policies, operations and, most importantly, people.

This interplay can also be called a value relationship, where delivering on the scope of a requirement or goal contributes to the delivery of another requirement or goal.

Using strategic thinking and data analysis can help you measure the effectiveness of these value relationships. Identifying and changing value relationships will help you curate and maximise outcomes, rather than allowing value relationships across the enterprise to remain mostly accidental and random.

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In this article, we’ll help you build a model to uncover interdependencies — where two things rely on each other —  by mapping value relationships across agendas, plans, goals, operations, and policies.

In our first article for Apolitical, we showed how strategies and plans integrate to increase organisational value, and how to identify value by analysing connections across these elements.

We also have video content to get you up to speed on this mapping technique, which we call an Integrated Value Model (IVM). IVM uses a simple matrix — think spreadsheet — that has rows with things that enable value on the left, paired to things that receive that value on the right.

In this article, we’ll discuss the variety of strategic source documents that add value to each other within an organisation, and how to start mapping your own value network.

The information sources

Policies help deliver plans, which help to deliver on missions and overarching agendas. Legislators and advocacy groups often ask agencies to report “everything they’re doing” about a law, plan or agenda.

Identifying and referencing source documents to answer these questions can require significant time and resources. How do these source documents add value to each other?

Which components of these sources are supplying this value to other components of other sources? How do you conduct the mapping? What minimal analysis would be required to obtain results?

Let’s start with some basic assumptions. Public service organisations tend to have:

• Policies that direct their operations

• Plans that identify objectives for those operations

• Performance measures to gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of operations

• Internal and external agendas that influence all of the former

First, gather your organisation’s documents that directly impact or demonstrate your organisation’s goals and strategies. Scan for internal and external documents that influence how your organisation sets its policies and plans. With the US government as an example:

• The President’s Management Agenda (PMA) sets overarching goals for all federal cabinet-level agencies

• These agencies issue strategic plans and policies, further defining the scope of the organisation

• Those policies influence long-term plans

• Shorter-term plans and programs identify operations, direct actions, and influence goals

Next, look at a source document’s table of contents. For example, the 2018 PMA has 14 goals, such as information technology modernisation, and improving customer experience with federal services.

Chapters and major section headers will be your first-level components to consider. These are usually goals. The PMA influences how departments and agencies respond with their strategic plans. For example, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 2018-2022 strategic plan has a notable component: “Build a culture of preparedness”.

We can place these components in the matrixed representation below. Note that value travels left to right. If the goal of the enabling activity on the left is achieved, the dependent activity on the right will move toward its goal state in some measurable way.

In other words, your ability to achieve the goal on the right depends on delivery of the enabling activity on the left, in the same way that a house depends on a solid foundation or a business depends on cash flow.

The FEMA/PMA example has objectives that support a specific strategic goal, which in turn support the PMA’s goal of improving customer experience.

Table 1. Matrix of goals and objectives by value dependencies

Note: what the table above does not indicate is the source document’s title, nor does it indicate the component description. For simplicity, these are omitted but should be included in your matrix. You will want to draw these out individually in a table and include the source document title, its web address or location, the component title (including any hierarchical numbering), and the component’s description.

Further, looking at the table above, we can see that achieving the objectives deliver on the PMA goal to improve customer experience. If we add success or performance measures, we can quantify the progress.

You can identify what work adds value to other work by looking at what and how policies, plans, objectives, goals, and programmes enable each other to succeed

Your organisation’s components and activities impact the parent agency’s overarching policies and plans. This gives you an array of how the activities of subordinate organisations contribute to the parent agency.

Take a moment to consider how your organisation monitors progress towards its objectives. Try to identify performance measures in the source documents so that you can demonstrate progress toward your objectives.

Let’s say you are mandated to deliver on the PMA’s customer experience (CX) example above. You must show progress toward the strategic goal to improve a specific facet of customer experience. You might look at the performance reports (FEMA example) that link performance measures to strategic goals in order to show the measures to quantify the progress.

Table 2. Matrix of goals, objectives and performance measures by value dependencies

In the above matrix, you can answer the question “what are you doing about this PMA goal” by reporting the measures that connect to that PMA goal by way of the strategic plan goals.

Find value in telling the story

Before you can begin to track customer experience and how your organisation can improve it, you first need to know your goals and measures. Your first questions should be, “How are we measuring CX?” and “How do we know we’re making progress?”.

To do this, start by mapping the enabling activities (such as performance measures) that your strategic plan objectives depend on to succeed. In some cases, the strategic plan will already have strategic goals matched to performance measures, as in the case of the Performance and Accountability Reports published by several US Government agencies.

You can identify what work adds value to other work by looking at what and how policies, plans, objectives, goals, and programmes enable each other to succeed. Our rule of thumb for mapping enabling components to dependent components requires answering a  qualitative question: If the enterprise delivered the enabling component, is there a 51% or greater chance that the dependent component would move closer to its end state in some measurable way?

This rule of thumb helps you identify value dependencies and interdependencies (such as a pair of components that both enable, and depend, on each other for success). These mappings help you tell the story of what relationships among various sets of work need to be reviewed or changed to deliver on the organisation’s goals or agenda.

With enough relationships, you can see the hierarchies and paths of how each component adds to the big picture, showing you what enduring changes are possible in the current state of your organisation.

For example, a hospital might consider transferring money from the parking budget to increase hospital beds, when in fact the availability of parking is a performance measure that correlates with how frequently patients choose that hospital for care. Therefore, when the parking department increases parking, they can claim some of the credit for an increase in new patients.

You can use this spreadsheet template to map your performance metrics to your strategic plan objectives. At this stage, you can begin to achieve three strategic analysis goals:

• Explain how the enabling activities (the left column) add value to the dependent activities

• Identify which enabling activities to change in order to add more value to their dependent activity

• Select performance measures and strategic plan objectives to guide the development or revision of a program

To determine which mappings to perform next, consider which of the goals above you would like to achieve first, and perform the related mappings for that goal.

For example, if you want to add more value to a priority (Goal 2), you can identify how your directives, programmes and performance measures help that priority achieve its end state.

Then, you can review each related directive, programme, and performance measure to revise them (or create new ones) to maximise that value they provide to that priority. This helps you manage change, mindful of the policy ecosystem that affects, and is affected by, the changes you’re trying to make.

In our next article, we will discuss the kinds of products you can build from the value relationships above and how to tailor them to specific stakeholders inside and outside your enterprise. — Basil J. White and Beth A. Martin

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