Hi Laura, we recently tried this at one of the meet-ups. @petrabee and @afrakelsall facilitated and I’m sure they’d have tips for you. You can find the slides they used uploaded to ‘Documents’ in this group.

I also remember that @rob-cunney was at that meet-up, he has quite of bit of experience with this structure (and all of them btw!) and might also be able to share some useful tips?

Hi Laura. I would be very happy to talk to you, but with the caveat that I have only ever used this LS as a practice with the special interest group. I found it took some getting my head around, so my advice would be to try to test run it in a safe space using your example, before ‘going live’.

Hi Laura,

As Maria mentioned, I’ve used the AC matrix quite a bit, mainly as a way of getting people to think about matching tools to specific types of systems. I’ll see if I can pull out some slides that I’ve used in the past. Some tips and tricks that I’ve found:
– I find it’s good to spend some time getting people to think about a challenge where they want to deliver improvement, and then the “one big thing” they would like to try to deliver improvement. This should be something that requires the involvement of other people (important for the “Agreement” side of the matrix). I often use “Impromptu Networking” to help participants get their “one big thing” idea clear in their heads
– Worth spending some time explaining the concepts of agreement and certainty (particularly as the matrix plots them in reverse: strictly speaking, it’s the “disagreement/uncertainty matrix”). For the certainty aspect I ask them to think about the degree of predictability: will their big idea generate a completely predictable result every time (high certainty), or will the outcome be completely random (uncertainty)? For the agreement aspect I ask them to imaging pitching their big idea to a room full of all the stakeholders involved: is everyone is likely to think that this is the best idea they’ve ever heard (complete agreement), or will everyone object (complete disagreement)?
– For most groups I tend to find that there are relatively few improvement ideas that end up in the bottom left (simple/linear) and top right (chaos) areas of the matrix: this can be useful to show how little is in the simple/linear system, yet we tend to reach for the simple/linear tools a lot in healthcare (RCA, SOPs, Policies, etc). Likewise, it’s useful to be able to point out how few (if any) are in the zone of chaos, despite people often thinking we spend a lot of time there in healthcare!

Depending on how much time you have, and size/diversity of the group, it may be useful to pair the AC matrix with Ecocyle planning. I find the latter is another LS that helps people to understand where projects are at in their development cycle, why them might be getting stuck, and what skills are needed to move them along (I’ve some slides that I’ve used for this one as well, and will see if I can dig them out too).

Let me know if you have any queries or need clarification on any of the above.

All the best,

Rob

Wow thank you guys, I really appreciate this information and all the support/advice – my email is Laura.keel1@nhs.scot and I will spend some time reviewing as you’ve all suggested.