LESSON LEARNED
Ready, Set, Readiness!
Ongoing attention to readiness, or willingness and ability to enact change at both individual and organizational levels, is a must.
Readiness involves both psychological and behavioral aspects of people and agencies.
Leaders and implementation teams must constantly consider and attend to readiness at all organizational levels to effectively support teams and others involved.
Readiness building involves attending to general organizational and program/practice-specific components; and understanding it often changes after further defining core components.
What this can look like in practice
One of the key aspects of the pilot project was the way in which it leveraged two complimentary practices together in support of Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) services to achieve stronger clinical and organizational outcomes. While this approach lent itself readily to the project’s overall goals, during the course of the work, PRTF teams learned that in order to support desired changes, they first had to further define what changes would look like in concrete, measurable terms. This meant not only taking time to understand the core aspects of each practice but taking time to understand and define the core features of the programs in tandem relative to desired goals. Each practice complemented the other; yet there were operational differences in how they impacted clinical and administrative performance. Just as one part of implementing a new program is understanding it’s relationship with other programs and initiatives already in place, during the pilot investing in readiness meant taking the time to define and map these practices in alignment with each other, to further help clarify implementation strategies and what their day-to-day use would look like in individual PRTFs.