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Strategy – So where to from here?

Designing a better future requires leadership, knowledge, creativity, ingenuity and skill. Our expert advisers provide the structure, processes and insight you need to define and lead change.

Strategic planning – Control your organisation’s future

Our strategic planning services provide your organisation with clear and compelling objectives, an agreed and well structured path to achieve these, and an atmosphere of clarity of purpose in which boards, leaders and staff are motivated to get the work done.

BaxterLawley’s expert multidisciplinary team have the experience and technical skills in research, performance evaluation, financial analysis and strategy development to undertake rigorous performance evaluation, options modelling and operational planning. But whether or not your plan actually works is determined by the actions of your team over the following days, months and years. As such, we approach strategic planning from both a technical and a people perspective and embed change management into the process from day one. Carefully organised engagement of clients, staff, boards, funders and other stakeholders is cost effective and reduces risk. When major change is required, it is also a way of defining and aligning new thinking, attitudes and behaviours.

Public policy – Helping to design and deliver a better future

Creating policies that affect the lives of thousands or millions of people in an environment of rapid change, conflicting priorities and fiscal constraints requires the highest order skills. However, in many cases developing the policy is the easy part. Creating the change to achieve policy outcomes requires that it is well supported, often by a large and diverse group of stakeholders or gatekeepers, over many years and through leadership transition. Traditionally, governments have a poor track record in change management, instead taking a rules based or top down approach, often for too short a duration. Today, the more innovative government agencies are instead using marketing and behavioural economics approaches, identifying key segments and the specific changes they want to achieve, setting outcomes based targets, planning and resourcing change and developing innovative ‘sales pitches’.

BaxterLawley has an established reputation for evidence-based and pragmatic policy design and evaluation, and for the development of change strategies with lasting impact. We have worked with a wide range of Peak Bodies, and Commonwealth, State and Local governments. Areas of work include in Education, Health, Housing, Tax, Disability Services, Aboriginal Affairs, Arts and Culture, Sport and Recreation, while central agencies serviced include Treasury and Audit.

Defining strategic goals and outcome measures

Measuring an organisation’s performance is challenging, most particularly for Not-for-profits and governments. For these organisations, quantity and quality of impact cannot always be identified or attributed and change can take years or decades to achieve. For instance, how does the leadership of an organisation measure whether it is achieving its mission of improving social disadvantage, health or homelessness?

BaxterLawley have worked successfully with a number of organisations and their boards to define their mission and translate this into meaningful, measurable performance data that tell you if you are on track. We also have methodologies for incorporating intangible, long-term outcome measures for when change may take a generation.

Measuring outcomes

If you are a supplier of human services to government or a government agency then you will likely also be dealing with the requirement to develop and deliver to contracts based on the achievement of outcomes.

BaxterLawley has extensive experience in the development of outcomes measures in support of government procurement policy. Our advisors have worked in a range of roles within agencies, at the whole of government policy level and with individual organisations, and can help you develop an outcome or performance measurement system that is cost effective and encourages continual improvement.

Stakeholder engagement – Working with (not on) others

The most complex social and business problems can only be solved through working together. A critical aspect for the success of policies, programs and strategic plans revolves around the extent to which stakeholders of organisations are engaged and become supporters and promoters of your plans and ideas. Public sector or Not-for-profit organisations in particular must bring their stakeholders along with them. Often, engaging an independent party is the best way to establish the credibility and efficacy of the message.

BaxterLawley can support your organisation in the development of its communications and stakeholder engagement plans, building tools and implementing them, and assessing the results of these activities.

Indigenous engagement – creating effective collaboration in this unique environment

Creating truly trusting relationships requires a long-term commitment to understanding and respecting each others’ values, priorities and contributions. Our specialist advisors have more than twenty years working with indigenous communities, organisations and leaders and a deep commitment to working with indigenous people to support improvement in health, education, employment, housing and social outcomes.

Mergers, collaborations, divestment and franchising

Successful mergers are achieved when boards and leaders fully understand the impact of the merger on client or member value. Good merger advice and support goes beyond match-making and due diligence. It requires specialist support from experienced, independent advisors and multi-disciplinary teams. BaxterLawley can help you from the pre-merger stage right though to implementation, change management and post-merger review.

For Not-for-profits seeking to meet new challenges, franchising, licensing and establishing co-operatives can be effective options.  BaxterLawley can help you to explore these, alone or in collaboration with like-minded organisations.