Focus Approach

Responding to current challenges and galvanising positive change

The Focus vision is of a Professional Services that:

underpins and sustains the University’s world-leading position in a changing world;
continually self-reviews; and
improves and adapts to meet new demands without a corresponding growth in costs.

As the University responds to the challenges posed by Covid-19 and enters an era of accelerated evolution, Focus is supporting colleagues in galvanising positive change and capitalising on new opportunities. We provide the tools to help you think differently about what you do - and how you do it.

Enabling smarter working

Focus is about getting greater results for less effort by removing unnecessary complexity and focusing skills, time and energy where they add most value. In a climate of recruitment freezes and budget caps, we can help your team achieve more with its current resources.

Promoting joined-up thinking and planning

We bring people together in a co-ordinated way, joining up effort and providing structure. We enable confidence in a controlled planning approach.

Fostering engagement, participation and team-working

We bring freshness and enthusiasm in the behaviours we model and we create the experience of working together in a cross-disciplinary team where everyone’s input is valued and appreciated and successes are celebrated. The Focus approach is the opposite of top-down, management-led change. Instead it encourages staff to initiate ideas and get involved in shaping solutions.

Independent stance

Focus is independent of any particular group. We bring fresh eyes and a neutral stance. We consider the perspective of all stakeholders and the impact on them. We deliver optimal processes that are well thought out and communicated.

A calm, measured, transparent approach

We help you focus on strategic outcomes to ensure processes will do what is expected by project sponsors and owners. We bring a calm measured approach to reduce 'knee jerk' reactions/solutions. We clearly map processes to ensure a capable, transparent, efficient and effective way forward.

Empowering teams

Focus coaches and walks alongside to support you in finding and implementing your own solutions. We don’t do projects ‘for’ or ‘to’ you. We skill and empower your team to identify your own solutions and sustain your journey of improvement into the future.

Evidence-based

Our evidence based approach means we use data to support decision and action. Suppose that in your office, the printer breaks down ‘far too often’, and ‘a lot’ of staff have to wait ‘ages’ for a fix causing ‘all sorts of’ inconvenience. We’ll ask for specifics: ‘how often’, ‘how many staff’, ‘how long a wait’ and ‘what is the impact’. Using data to characterise the problem means we start from a position of clarity. It also means that – once a solution has been implemented – the same things can be measured again to demonstrate an improvement.

Benefits-led

Our benefits-led approach means that in evaluating any potential change, we ask: what benefits will this deliver, to whom, how will they be measured, and how do they support University / departmental strategic aims? This helps ensure good value for money – the right changes made for the right reasons. The benefits that Focus is working towards include: enhanced staff/customer satisfaction, saved time, reduced cost, lowered risk, improved compliance, and better and more accurate data sources.

Tools, techniques and structured methodology

Within the Focus toolkit are tools, techniques and methodologies tailored to larger projects and to smaller quicker interventions. Our approach has a sound theoretical underpinning in lean process improvement methodology. Lean seeks to optimise how the effort, energy, skills and resources of an organisation and its people translate into creating value for the customer. This principle can be applied at any level, from a University-wide service review to a local team who want to take a more effective approach to team meetings.

Focus Approach

Consider 10 ways the Focus approach adds value:

Responding to current challenges and galvanising positive change

Enabling smarter working

Promoting joined-up thinking and planning

Fostering engagement, participation and team-working

Independent stance

A calm, measured, transparent approach

Empowering teams

Evidence-based

Benefits-led

Tools, techniques and structured methodology

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