I’m in the middle of a building project, adding an extension to an old house in Exeter, which we hope to move into later this year (time to live closer to ageing parents). We’ll be moving from Berkshire, so it’s been a ‘project from a distance’ – a trip to see the foundations in, the oak frame arriving, the space divided into rooms, colours chosen.
One or two big headaches, but generally speaking it’s gone pretty well so far from 160 miles away.
However – sometimes you just have to be there!

Many of you will know that I’m leading a Q Exchange project to create an Improvement Capability Framework. That’s right, the Kermit one. We’re looking for an easy way to define measure all the key elements of QI capability – this is important goal that has so far proved rather elusive…

The core team (Kate Hall, Kieran Walshe, Joy Furnival, Cleo Butterworth, Zoe Lord, and Ian Railton), have met and discussed, drawn in examples, looked at the research and now we’re ready to involve you in building on our foundations.
We’d love you to be there.

The intention is to build the details of a tool which can be used across Q, and in Q members’ organisations, to self-assess improvement capability. The project is about developing a common language and building an attractive product which will encourage team discussions. With a common framework and self-assessment in place, we’ll then be much better equipped within Q to spot where we have strengths, and be able to connect and share more purposefully, using the ‘scaffolding’ of this capability framework.

So… we have some solid foundations – dimensions of improvement grounded in research – but we need your help to build several floors, divide into rooms and choose the colours and soft furnishings – to make it a building which people want to occupy.

As a Q member, you’re invited to join an important workshop on June 12th, at the Studio, Birmingham. 10.00-16.00. We’re looking for 50-60 participants to help us segment and describe ‘what good looks like’ in improvement. You’ll be working in groups, agreeing the focus areas and the descriptions for different levels of capability. We’ll ask you to try out an on-line survey tool before the event and share the results. By the end of the day, we’re hoping to have a larger-than-life model on the wall which represents our co-created view of different levels of capability.
We’ll also be looking for your ideas and suggestions on how to make this popular and get it used in practice – your insights on how to take what’s on the wall, and turn it into an actionable tool that can be used in your own QI team to share QI capability knowledge and discover the right connections to make their next steps in the different areas of QI capability.

You’ll come away with a great sense of involvement, that your views will be represented in a model which will be used across the Q community and beyond. (If you’re interested in methods and facilitation, you’ll also have experienced a new facilitated process for building self-assessment frameworks.)

If you can make it, please sign up on EventBrite. You can join the group space here.
If you need financial support for travel costs, let me know – it’s important that we get the right people there.

If you’re really interested in creating a usable tool which makes improvement capability easy to understand, inspires local teams to take action, and helps us unlock the value of our 3000 Q members – then that’s you!