The Growth-Impact Model for Assessment and Planning

Notes from my sabbatical

The Growth-Impact Model is a tool for assessing the current status of an organization against its goals, plans, and budget, as well as for future planning, goal-setting, and resource allocation. I originally created this for a case study of The DAISY Foundation (DAISY) with a team of grad students from U Iowa College of Public Health, which was the impetus for my book How The DAISY Foundation has Influenced the Global Healthcare Landscape. I now use the model in my healthcare consulting work.

I assess Growth in terms of Scale (units) and Scope (programs). Using DAISY as an example, in the 24 years since its founding the organization DAISY’s scale has grown to nearly 6,500 Partner organizations in 42 countries; over 2.5 million nurses have been nominated for DAISY Awards, with over 250,000 having been honored.

An important but often overlooked element of Scale is retention. An organization cannot grow if for every new customer that comes in through the front door another leaves out the back door. The reason DAISY has been able to sustain such a consistently strong growth rate is that it’s retention rate is close to 100% among Partner organizations (I’ll say more about this when we get to Impact).

The second dimension of Growth is Scope – the range of products and services being offered. The days of Henry Ford being able to tell customers they could have any color car they wanted as long as it was black are long past. Successful organizations need to be one step ahead of the changing needs of their customers. DAISY has continued to be relevant by introducing new programs such as the DAISY Team and Leader Awards, mission grants, and most recently the DAISY Award for Nurse Educators.

The growth DAISY has achieved over the past 24 years would be the envy of any Silicon Valley startup. But that sort of growth can only be sustained if the organization is having a meaningful Impact for its customers. I assess this in terms of Reach and Depth.

Reach refers to the organization’s horizontal impact – the spread of its influence geographically and/or across an industry. DAISY’s impact has been remarkable. It has helped elevate the status of nurses and the nursing profession across the globe. DAISY has become one of the world’s most trusted healthcare brands.

DAISY has done more than any other entity to raise awareness of the importance of meaningful recognition for nurses, and in doing so has catalyzed similar recognition programs for non-nursing healthcare professions: the Bee Award, the Sunflower Award, the Rose Award – the names chosen are a tip of the hat to DAISY.

The Depth dimension of Impact refers to the program’s impact on individual customers. In the case of DAISY, that means both Partner organizations and individual nurses who are honored with DAISY Awards. Having worked with many DAISY hospitals I can say from personal experience that the program consistently has a positive impact on culture, which is one of the factors helping it achieve a 100% retention rate.

Even more impressive is the impact that being nominated for, and being honored with, a DAISY Award has on individual nurses. In a survey of nurses we conducted for the case study, 95% of respondents said that being honored with a DAISY Award was one of the highlights of their career.

The depth of DAISY’s impact on culture and morale is so profound that no hospital CEO in their right mind would even think of terminating the program.

The Growth-Impact Model provides a planning and goal-setting construct, but as Peter Drucker liked to point out, even the most beautiful plan must eventually degenerate into work. The second half of How The DAISY Foundation has Influenced the Global Healthcare Landscape describes 30 KBPs (Key Business Practices) which I distinguish from KSFs ( Key Success Factors). While several of these are unique to DAISY, most can be adapted by any organization of any size in any industry.

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NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

The new expanded second edition of How The DAISY Foundation has Influenced the Global Healthcare Landscape is now available on Amazon. 100% of book sale proceeds are donated to The DAISY Foundation.