Why a Team is Important:
Improvement efforts require problem solving and figuring out effective solutions that involve complex systems. The knowledge, skills, experiences, and perspectives of a multidisciplinary improvement team are especially critical because:
- Systems and processes can be complex
- Creativity is necessary
- The path to improvement is often unclear
- Effective improvements should involve the most efficient use of resources possible
- Cooperation is essential to implementation
- Team members have a stake in the outcome
- Processes involved are often cross-functional
- No one individual has sufficient knowledge to solve the problem
At times our temptation, out of respect to the busy schedules of our colleagues, may be to work alone (or perhaps with only one other staff member) on an improvement project.
Resist the temptation to work alone. Quality improvement is truly a team sport.
A team may assume many roles; Step 2 specifically focuses on forming improvement teams. By the end of Step 2, you should be able to list your project sponsor, project champion (which may be you!), and the potential members of your improvement team.
Who Should Be on the Improvement Team:
Having the right people on an improvement team is critical to a successful improvement effort. An effective team needs to be flexible enough to respond to the ongoing challenges of quality improvement. A solid improvement team is typically cross-departmental, interdisciplinary, may serve a single purpose, and may be more informal in nature than an ongoing team chartered for other purposes. While not all team members need to have prior QI experience or training, the team should have access to resources and staff with current knowledge, experience, and training in quality improvement methodology.
When structuring the team, think about the following:
The people who do the work need to be the ones to change the work.
Characteristics of Team Members
Thoughtful attention toward selecting members for a QI team is critical to successful improvement. While there is not a specific “how-to” guide for QI team selection, there are some worthy guiding principles to consider. An ideal QI team member:
- Represents any discipline and ideally works directly with the system targeted for improvement
- Is willing to learn from other team members
- Is willing to maintain open communication with staff, leadership, and students
- Is willing to assume individual responsibility that contributes to the team’s success
- Commits to the success of the improvement project
Team Meetings: Too Busy to Meet?
In a hectic college health setting, meetings can always be cancelled, but they cannot easily be scheduled. You know from experience the difficulty of accomplishing a project without regular communication and exchange of ideas. Once your improvement team is formed, set regular, recurring, in person meetings. Try bi-weekly. You may be able to adjust your schedule during different phases of the project. Sometimes quick 5-10 minute huddles between formal meetings are sufficient to rapidly problem solve and keep momentum.
Managing Documents: Do We Really Need a Paper Trail?
You never know when you might need to refer back to an early aim statement, graph, or early set of meeting notes. Sometimes the significance of an idea or product does not become apparent until further down the road. During your improvement team’s first few meetings, agree on a method for documenting and storing project work. Preserve work from the beginning as you work through each step of the improvement journey, including all PDSA cycles.
- Meeting Agenda and Notes Template
- The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Worksheet
- Worksheet for Tracking Linked PDSA Cycles
Improvement Journey Exercise #2
- Who is your project sponsor?
- Who is the project champion?
- List potential members of your improvement team.