Why residents are like starfish - and how to make a difference

Recently I’ve been working with a group of residents to bring them into the systems thinking fold. It was initiated by the Resident Involvement team, and was a great way of getting back in touch with the Voice of the Customer. I designed and delivered two half days of training with a week’s reprieve between: the first contained theory of what systems thinking is and the tools we practitioners use, the second using those tools to gather real data.

During the week between sessions they were set some homework to  find out what happens on their estates, with regards to services the company provides them (cleaning, gardening, caretakers and so on).  The start of the second session was devoted purely to feedback on their findings. It took longer than planned to go around the table but that was no trouble as their findings were pure gold. I made copious quantities of scribbles in my note pad to refer to later!

We also revisited some fish-bones that we started in the first session, examining why residents do not get involved in estate inspections. It was a chance for them to vent and linked closely to the results of their homework. We also established what it is that matters to residents, and potentially did away with the spurious notion that residents like the existing system of scoring estate inspections (they don’t).

I left the Horsham office feeling energised, yet grounded. There were no surprises with what the residents were telling us, other than perhaps they were, actually, realistic with their expectations of what they want and what we can provide. I hope that they too gained something useful from the training; a different angle that they can bring to the next Resident Involvement event – a systems thinking point of view.

Which brings me nicely on to a story I was told not so long ago about a little boy and his father. They were walking along the beach as the tide was going out; hundreds of starfish littered the sand, stranded by the waves. The little boy went over to the nearest one and picked it up, returning it gently to the sea. He went back for another, again returning the starfish to the waters. This continued several more times before his father remarked:

“What are you doing, son?”

“Returning the starfish to the sea, Pa”.

The father cast his eye over the beach and the many glistening bodies of starfish waiting for the tide to come back to return them home. He shook his head in futility at the effort.

“There’s no point in that, son. There’s too many and you’ll never make a difference.”

The little boy continued, picking up yet another starfish and dropping it into the sea with a plop.

“I made a difference to that one,” he replied. “And that one,” he continued, returning another, and another.

There may only have been seven residents present at the training, but you have to start somewhere! The training had a heavy focus on the Voice of the Customer, so they could appreciate their input into our continuous improvement, and they could contribute to the next Resident Involvement event with a systems thinking mind-set.

If they begin to question why we do things in a particular way (is there not a better way?) and ask to see the data that backs up our statements, then that training will have made a difference to them.