Mary Anne Greco this week made the case that the application of OMNI’s Values, with its Mission in mind, is all that is required to recruit new people to the OMNI community.

This is true provided we understand what doing our jobs means, and create the conditions necessary for making that happen.

We live in a new world. This is the world of knowledge work. Staff members own the means of production now – it is in their heads, in their personal history, and in their self-developed talent and relationships. There is a natural and expansive diversity of skills, experiences, and potential niches in which to carve out personal contribution. The very nature of work has changed. The new employment ‘contract’ is politically complex.

This is precisely why Transparency and Meaningful Contribution are two powerful values in the OMNI framework.

Transparency is a must if this mosaic of individuals, with their highly personal talents and aspirations, is going to have the best, latest and most accurate information possible related to their own efforts. Access to that information is a necessary condition for effective decisions about what and, what not, to do.

It is by the individual choices, and the depth of information in which they are made, that paves the way to a contribution that is aligned with the efforts of others, and truly meaningful on a personal level.

The diversity of talent and opportunities for care innovation make command and control not only a less and less useful practice, but potentially an innovation killer.

This is why projects new to OMNI homes must increasingly be sold, not told. They must be endorsed or incubated, not ordered and directed.

The best way to ensure that there is buy-in for a change project is to listen to what the people who are most exposed to opportunities for improved care want to do. With a full view of those opportunities the home office project committee can back the projects that are most in tune with the direction of OMNI as a whole.

This is how OMNI’s projects committee can serve as a resource to its many emerging innovators.

The cornerstones of success in this effort are these. First home office must ensure that it is not getting in the way. It must invite innovative project proposals from every member of the OMNI community. It must have a disciplined process for assessing these in a timely manner, and a disciplined way of resourcing and evaluating each innovation effort. The homes must convince the projects committee of the merit of their proposals.

Conversely, if home office has a project it really wants to see implemented, it must present this project in full description to the OMNI community and sell it. If there are no takers, it is for the project proponents to figure out why and redouble efforts to incubate interest. This is an ultimate accountability mechanism from the ground up.

This could appear to be risky business. It could seem to foreshadow a loss of control with chaos soon to follow. Fact is the loss of control is to some degree unavoidable. Diversity does that. To cement some certainty and direction into the mix, what is needed (apart from a good sell job) is the creation of an OMNI-wide evaluation capability.

It is a well-known principle of management that what gets measured gets done. A method for evaluating what projects align with OMNI’s direction and competencies, and which ones do not, is one bookend of the responsibility resting with OMNI’s top leadership.

On the other end of the shelf, is the directional framework for decision making, of which the Mission and Values, and those simmering Signatures are all a part. These provide a destination point to which we can all direct our efforts. When enough people make enough independent decisions within these parameters, the OMNI community will accelerate innovation and achieve unprecedented care standards.

In our ongoing series of published discussions with OMNI administrators a few specialized areas of interest are already taking shape.

Both Linda Pierce and Gary Sims see the need to develop reputation and relationship networks in their communities. A quick scan of the writings of top North American and United Kingdom business commentators suggests these two abilities are of primary importance in a highly networked, fluid knowledge economy.

In Rosebridge and West Lake there is an emerging community of practice providing care for residents with particularly challenging dementia support needs. In Burnbrae and Maplewood, wound care is surfacing as an area of interest. And for months the pursuit of enhanced palliative care abilities has continued to edge its way into the news.

Coupling the Mission and Values framework with decisions about what outcomes to evaluate would make clear which of these activities are most likely to get the endorsement, resources and attention of the organization as a whole.

The first tells us where we want to be successful, the other tells us where we are successful. If we can better identify who is exceedingly good at what, we will be better able to move that knowledge around to create success for others who desire it.

If OMNI’s project committee is to be at all useful to the innovation effort it has three important things to do. Tell its community where it is willing to put its human and financial capital, provide a kit of developmental tools (like education and best practices) and, define desired outcomes.

Subsets of these are to provide information and choice, encourage the right kinds of activity, and provide a mechanism of evaluation and accountability for outcomes, not process (this distinction cannot be stressed enough).

With these elements attended to, a culture of true individual innovation and contribution is possible. And as Mary Anne Greco queries, “Who wouldn’t want to work in that sort of environment?”

Prepared by: Peter Pula, Executive Editor, OMNIway News

E-mail: peter@newsroom5.com