At Cube, we support clients to transform their organisations and the service systems they deliver to be more innovative, accessible, responsive to community needs and future ready.
From this work, we have observed that there are four common drivers of transformations for purpose-driven organisations and that for these organisations, having a big idea at the centre of the transformation can unite and motivate stakeholders and drive the transformation’s success.
The drivers of transformation for purpose-driven organisations
Transformations delivered by public sector and not for profit organisations are typically driven by one of the following four scenarios:
- A change in leadership, with a new leader or leaders who want to fundamentally change an organisation or service system.
- A crisis, inquiry or Royal Commission which leads to fundamental redesign or transformation of a service system and the organisations responsible for delivering the service system.
- Sustained advocacy by community groups who provide ideas and proposals on how to improve services, organisations and systems, often based on their lived experience.
- A large budget reduction meaning the organisation needs to fundamentally change its service offering and/or deliver its functions, roles and responsibilities in a completely different way.
Communicating the big idea at the centre of a transformation
Many transformations have a big idea at their core that can help to communicate the positive change the transformation will achieve.
Centring this big idea creates clarity, buy in and a sense of purpose for the workforce and other stakeholders who are critical to bringing the transformation to life over what can be a multi-year journey.
Examples of big ideas at the centre of service system transformations we have supported at Cube include:
- Early childhood – the early childhood system is Australia is being transformed at a national, state and territory level to provide universal access to high quality early childhood education and care services, recognising the importance of the early years and of early childhood education in setting children up for future success.
- Mental health – the transformation of the mental health system in Victoria is centred around moving to a system that is co-designed with people with lived experience and enables people accessing mental health services and their families, carers, kin and supporters to have choice and control and have their rights upheld.
- Disability service system – the idea at the centre of transforming the disability service system and the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is to provide individualised funding and supports for people with disability to equip them with choice and control and better quality of life.
For a purpose-driven organisation, a big transformative idea might be about improving its service delivery to the community and having a greater impact, by transforming its operating model, systems or culture.
We work with organisations to define and communicate their big transformative ideas while putting in place the structures and boundaries necessary to help them maintain focus and discipline in delivering on the transformation.
You can learn more about our Transformation and Implementation service line here.
About the Author
Kelly Rose is a director at Cube Group. She leads Cube’s Service System Transformation practice and has delivered a broad range of projects from policy and strategy development through to review and evaluation. She’s experienced in program, service and funding model design as well as reform implementation and sector capability building.
