Frameworks and Support
Why frameworks?
Without a framework, strategy is just good public speaking. Many ideas can sound good, regardless of whether they are or not. A framework provides a benchmark, allowing quantitive and quantitative data to indicate whether the strategy is working. It allows you to correct things before they go wrong.
What is a framework
A framework is a structured way to represent ideas. It is useful for:
Planning and strategy
Career development
Operational decisions
Other assessments - exam marking schemes, proposal refereeing, etc
What makes a sound framework
Clear - It makes clean distinctions between critical values, themes and achievement levels
Comprehensible - It is easy to understand & remember
Complete - It covers all the major factors
Consensus - It makes good sense to most people most of the time. Everyone is content to use it
What makes a successful framework
Viable vision - It brings together pragmatism (what we have) and aspiration (what we would like). It links them in a practical way
Versatility - It facilitates decision making, both in familiar and unfamiliar situations.
Values - It provides a reliable & acceptable compass, aligned to the ethics of both an organisation & its people. It should rapidly make clear when we say we want one thing but actually want another
What we offer
Datchet Consulting facilitates this framework building. We can give guidance and institute best practice.
Our experience
Terry has drafted a personal development framework to support computing specialists. It helped them develop careers across academia and industry, covering areas such as management and tech.
All his major academic grants (he generated around £15M during his academic career) followed workshops to work out the key themes and develop core text.
A recent client wanted to build a self-assessment tool for board members to assess their competence. Terry synthesized information from three main areas (a domain report, a theory of knowledge, and the company’s own internal workshop outputs). From this, he produced a set of categories and then wrote the question set.
Client Feedback
Datchet Consulting undertook a short study for Beautiful Information on the development of a framework and assessment tool for boards of healthcare organisations. It aimed to evaluate the governance of information literacy and analytic capability.
The resulting framework built on three sources: a published analysis of the shortcoming of healthcare analytics in the UK, a widely used educational taxonomy around learning, and fieldwork that Beautiful Information had already undertaken. From this, a 9-section question set was written to probe systematically the board’s ability to assess each critical part of the service – from the overall service delivery, to detailed assessment of how data was used to inform decisions. It linked the board’s self-assessment to its CQC evaluation and addressed issues of compliance, finance and regulation, as well as service operations and planning.
The outcome was a pair of on-line questionnaires: one for boards, one focused on analytics. The web interface can be expanded to accommodate further drill-down assessments and will eventually connect to support service, seminars and development activities.
Terry’s input came at a critical time for us in shaping our thinking about how to develop an understanding of a trust’s analytical maturity. His experience in the field and his responsiveness made him the perfect partner for BI on this high-profile project.
—Dr Marc Farr, Founder, Beautiful Information