Message to the Change Leader

In the NIATx model of process improvement, staff members work together to improve business processes that affect the four aims: reduce waiting time, reduce no-shows, increase continuation, and increase admissions.

An Executive Sponsor—typically the director or Chief Executive Officer of an organization—is responsible for authorizing the time and resources needed to complete the project successfully. The Executive Sponsor also designates a staff member as Change Leader to improve a process that influences one of the four aims. Together, the Executive Sponsor and the Change Leader agree on a plan for a Change Project: a process improvement initiative that targets one aim, one level of care, at one location, with one population.

The Change Leader is responsible for organizing and conducting the project. Together, the Executive Sponsor and Change Leader also assemble a Change Team, which includes staff members and, in same cases, customers.

As a Change Leader, you are the intermediary between the Executive Sponsor and Change Team members, making sure that the Executive Sponsor’s priorities are communicated to the team and that the team’s ideas are well represented to the Executive Sponsor.

Other Change Leader responsibilities are straightforward:

1. Managing the project
   • Developing a schedule
   • Monitoring progress towards deadlines
   • Arranging meeting times and locations
   • Making sure all team members have the opportunity to participate
   • Supervising measurement, compilation, and review of data
   • Keeping the team moving forward
2. Facilitating team meetings
   • Encouraging participation
   • Documenting key decisions
   • Assigning responsibilities
   • Preventing disarray by staying on task
   • Soliciting opinions, discussing ideas, and reaching consensus
   • Communicating key decisions either in person, over the phone, or through e-mail
3. Promoting change by encouraging people to try out new ideas
4. Supervising change and helping the team with implementation issues
5. Empowering employees to overcome barriers to implementation of change experiments
6. Keeping the Executive Sponsor for your team apprised of Change Team activities
7. Celebrate successes by the team in a visible and rewarding manner

Sample Meeting Agendas

One aspect of your responsibilities will be to develop meeting agendas based on what your team has to accomplish. Here are samples of two agendas: one for the very first team meeting and the other showing a standard format you can adapt for other meetings.

The First Meeting

One of the first activities for your team is to answer the question “What’s it like to be our customer?” In the first team meeting, therefore, you need to talk about why the team exists and what the Executive Sponsor wants you to accomplish, and you need to plan how to start answering that first question.

Sample Agenda for First Change Team Meeting

Regular Meetings

Agendas for all subsequent, regular meetings will largely be the same, incorporating five key elements:

1. Call to order and review/amend agenda.
2. Review previous meeting minutes.
3. Follow-up on action items from the previous week.
4. Review next actions and next steps.
5. Adjourn.

Sample Agenda for Regular Team Meeting