Meilys Heulfryn Smith is the Programme Lead for Community Health and Social Care Transformation at Gwynedd Council. She describes her experiences working with the Vanguard Method to understand and improve People Centred Systems in Gwynedd.
Meilys demonstrates that ‘understanding’ and ‘improvement’ is:
- systemic – beyond organisational boundaries and, in Gwynedd, spans the public, private, and third sector,
- outside-in – people that the system is set up to serve are placed at the centre of the system (the design and management of work). This perspective defines which organisations need to work together to understand what is typically and predictably happening, not from the organisations’ point of view, but from the point of view of the people the system is set up to serve. Most importantly, an understanding about why these things typically and predictably happen is empirically understood and,
- systematic – constant and complete, for all demand.
Meilys describes that she chose to start understanding and improving in a geographical area, to understand citizens’ demands and design against them. This approach to understanding and improving performance has many applications in the public, private, and third sectors – across many sectors including telecoms, utilities, health, social care, policing, housing, and more.