Instructions for the system assessment

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Instructions for using the Commissioning Compass system assessment

Remember, only use as much of the assessment as makes sense for you in your situation.

The tool is intentionally wide-ranging to encompass strategic whole system working and commissioning tactics and processes. But it also takes you through a change process in each 'aspect’ of commissioning.

The temptation is to start at the top, 'whole system working' this aspect is rightly aspirational. You may want to start at the foundational 'aspects'. These then assess your system readiness for the stretch to the more aspirational 'aspects'

As an example. You may have good relationships in your system, but this is undermined by your capacity and capability. You may have good information and insight, but this is undermined by making room to make a difference. It is important to strengthen your system from the bottom up.

There are six steps to carrying out the full exercise:

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Instructions for using the Commissioning Compass system assessment

There are six steps to carrying out the full exercise:

We have said in several places you can go into as much or as little detail as you wish with this assessment.

If you want to have a strategic overview you can just complete steps one and two.

For a more analytical view also do step three.

For the assessment to inform an action or development plan you will need to additionally complete step four and five.

And for the super advanced level step six is for you! 

Step One -Getting started

Spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with the 'eight aspects of commissioning.

Understand how the top four are outcomes focused, and systems based and the bottom four are the foundational pillars.

You need to have solid scores on the foundational pillar 'aspects' to be able to effectively move to be aspirational in the top four 'aspects'

Give your place an instinctive score on how you are doing in terms of each of the 'eight aspects'. Do this quickly. It is just your first pass, your gut reaction.

We will encourage you to revisit this after working through the questions for the aspects.

Scores are categorised as below. Note that scores of 70 and above have been rare in system-assessments so far. ​

0 – 24 Poor (significant risk)​

25 – 49 Fair (lesser/lower risk, improvement required) ​

50 – 74 Good (opportunities identified/issues need to be addressed) ​

75 – 100 Excellent (no action required)​

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Instructions for using the Commissioning Compass system assessment

Step Two - self-assessment questions

You will have already recorded a score for each of the eight aspects, based on your initial gut feeling. ​

Next, work through the assessment questions. These are encouraging you to take a deeper look at your system and develop more curiosity. Score your 'system' on each question.

If you are doing this as a team and each person scored individually, do not simply average your results – look at the overall pattern of highs and lows, open up the conversation about what people are seeing in the system to give that score.​

In a workshop, this can be a great way to use appreciative or action enquiry. It will help you to be curious about how stakeholders experience each aspect and what the knock-on impact of that is. This will help too with the next step.

At the end, we’ll compare your initial gut reactions to your actual score.​ Again, we ask you to be curious about where there are differences or alignment. What is that telling you?

If you want to have a more analytical view now move onto step three.

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Instructions for using the Commissioning Compass system assessment

Step Three - Factors that constrain and enable

For each aspect, we will explore the factors that constrain or enable you Which hold you/ the system back ? Which most supports you to achieve change and outcomes? ​

Be curious about the depth of your awareness or understanding of each of the factors. You may wish to explore the factors further before you score them, but this is not essential at this stage. You can pick that up in your action plan later.  

Once you have discussed each of the factors that constrain and enable, select the three most important enablers and the three most important constraints for each of the eight aspects.

If undertaking this assessment with stakeholders, it is likely that there will be very different perspectives in the system. In your workshops, think about how you can explore these perspectives to give you a deeper understanding of your system relationships. There are not right and wrong answers here. This is to provide you with insight and intelligence to identify where to intervene for the most effective change.

If you want to develop this assessment into an action plan or commissioning development plan we recommend you complete steps four and five. Using your assessment to determine the possible commissioning approaches.

The action plan needs to include all of the insights and actions you have captured along the way in your exploration, curiosity and conversations.

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Using your constraints and enablers in an action plan

Step Four - Control and influence. Urgent and important 

Once you have evaluated the most enabling and constraining factors for each aspect, you can move to determine what is in your control and what do you need to influence.  

Whether the factor is:  

in your control  

influenceable 

out of your control 

whether, in the opinion of the group, the factor is:  

to be boosted  

not to be boosted 

would benefit from innovation or experimentation 

You can arrive at this by exploring the following questions. 

How will we boost the enabling factors in our control?

How can we influence partners and stakeholders for enabling factors out of your control?

For constraining factors within our control, what actions can we take to overcome them? 

How will we use our influence where we can, to reduce constraining factors and build on enabling factors? 

How will we take account of and work around constraining factors that are not in our control? 

What experiments can we run to look at constraining factors that require innovation? 

Which of these are the most urgent? 

Which of these are the most important? 

Which of these would require the most work? 

Are there any “quick wins”? 

We suggest you use an action plan to capture your actions here. If desired, this action-planning can be developed into a Commissioning Development Plan. 

Action-planning on the factors that constrain or enable can help you to expand your ‘elbow room’ - your space and power to make an impact on effective commissioning. 

Doing this activity across all eight of the aspects at once is quite a big task.  We suggest you take the bottom four aspects first giving you twenty-four constraints and enablers to work from.  Develop an overall plan for these.  When looking at the top four you may need a separate plan for each.  

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Self-assessment exercise - purpose

This exercise is not about benchmarking or comparison, but about improving:

Our immediate commissioning practice; and

Our ‘room to manoeuvre’ with commissioning –capability, capacity, freedom, power.

To that end, we are evaluating ourselves across services and aspects, then creating a development plan.

Only go into as much detail as you have time for, and is useful!

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Self-assessment exercise - Scoring

Give your place an instinctive score on how you are doing in terms of each of the eight aspects, then revisit this after working through the questions and aspects and scoring them out of 100.

Keep these categories in mind, and note that scores of 70 and above have been rare in self-assessments so far:

0 – 24 Poor (significant risk)

25 – 49 Fair (lesser/lower risk, improvement required)

50 – 74 Good (opportunities identified/issues need to be addressed)

75 – 100 Excellent (no action required)

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Instructions for the self-assessment

You should have already recorded a score for each of the eight aspects, based on your initial gut feeling.

Now, we are going to work through a longer set of questions. Score your place on each question, but do not simply average your results – look at the overall pattern.

At the end, we’ll compare your initial gut reactions to your actual score.

For each aspect, you will also be presented with a number of factors in place that constrain or enable you as part of the self-assessment.

Which of these factors most holds back your ability to work in this space? Which most supports you?

Think about both your level of understanding of the factors and also the factors themselves. The aspects that hold you back or enable you to work on this aspect of commissioning will be picked up in your commissioning development plan.

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Summing up your score

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Have you completed your self-assessment?

The self-assessment is a flexible tool and we suggest that you only use the parts that make sense in your context.

If you do the whole thing then by the end of the workshops you should have done the following:

You have produced an initial ‘gut score’ on how your system performs against all eight aspects.

You have worked your way through each of the eight aspects and worked on the questions. You should have a score out of 100 for each question.

You have worked your way through the ‘factors that constrain and enable’ for each of the eight aspects. For each of the eight aspects, you should have a list of the three most important constraints for your system and the three most important enablers.

If you have completed all of this then your scoring is complete and you can proceed with the next section.

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Your scores

For each aspect of your commissioning, look back at the long list of questions and the scores that you gave yourself per question. Weigh up how your system has performed and give yourself an overall score for each aspect out of 100. Record it in a table similar to the one below, with the aspects presented in this order:

Aspect

Score (/100)

Approach

Whole system design 

Place-based wellbeing 

Relationships and organisation across the system 

Leadership of place for whole system change  

Capacity, capability and confidence 

Unlocking potential 

Citizen, place, and outcome centred

Citizen-centred commissioning 

Information, insight and innovation 

Values-based/disruptive commissioning 

Making room to make a difference

Strategic procurement of services against needs 

Commissioning process 

Market management 

Models and tactics 

Delivery model design 

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Your scores

Use your scoring table to identify which strategic commissioning approach will provide a best fit for the place, building on local strengths, without letting them to be undermined by weaker aspects. This will not simply be the approach that aligns with the highest scoring aspect. 

The first score over 50, reading down the table, which also does not have a lower score beneath it, identifies the recommended strategic commissioning approach. This reflects the fact that an approach higher in the table, whilst being more strengths, system, and outcomes-focused, is only sustainable if the commissioning aspects lower down the table can support it. 

Before making the decision whether to select the recommended strategic commissioning approach, or to opt for a blend of approaches, it will be useful to sense-check the suggested strategic commissioning approach with an understanding of specific commissioning challenges, considering key constraints and enablers and any associated action-planning to support the development of local commissioning, and the description of what to consider for this approach. A blend of approaches may be useful at different times and in different commissioning situations.  

Aspect

Score (/100)

Approach

Whole system design 

Place-based wellbeing 

Relationships and organisation across the system 

Leadership of place for whole system change  

Capacity, capability and confidence 

Unlocking potential 

Citizen, place, and outcome centred

Citizen-centred commissioning 

Information, insight and innovation 

Values-based/disruptive commissioning 

Making room to make a difference

Strategic procurement of services against needs 

Commissioning process 

Market management 

Models and tactics 

Delivery model design 

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Using your constraints and enablers in an action plan

For each aspect of commissioning, you should have a list of three key enablers and three key constraints, giving a total of 24 important constraints and 24 important enablers.

Work through these factors and answer identify and record: 

Whether the factor is:  

in your control  

influenceable 

out of your control 

whether, in the opinion of the group, the factor is:  

to be boosted  

not to be boosted 

would benefit from innovation or experimentation 

This will enable you (either with or without partners and other stakeholders) to consider action-planning to support the development of the commissioning function for the place. 

Action-planning on the factors that constrain or enable effective commissioning can help you to expand your ‘elbow room’ – yourr space and power to make an impact. 

Making space to develop your effectiveness in commissioning will pay dividends in supporting the implementation of the selected strategic commissioning approach and enabling the delivery of strategic commissioning plans. 

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Familiarise yourselves with the selected strategic commissioning approach and start to implement it

Read or re-visit the pre-reading – Introducing and Implementing Strategic Commissioning Approaches 1-8 to familiarise yourself with the selected strategic commissioning approach(es), to explore and understand the selected approach, to learn what may be required, understand and plan for the associated strategic risks and start to put it into practice (Step 6). For each strategic commissioning approach, this includes:

Introducing the approach

How to move towards this approach

What to do, and what not to do, when pursuing this approach

Specific risks to watch out for, including when your room for manoeuvre is limited, and other hints and tips

The commissioning skills and structure that might be needed for this approach

The Council may wish to develop a Strategic Commissioning Plan.

The council may wish to articulate the selected strategic commissioning approach in a strategic commissioning plan, which may set medium or long-terms goals for meeting the adult social care needs in the place and how it intends to meet those needs and may also include the intended plans for commissioning development (see Step 5 above) in the place.

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Using your constraints and enablers in an action plan

No set format is provided for the action-planning, but we suggest that you could work through some of the following questions to support the development of actions in response to each factor.  

How will we boost enabling factors? 

For constraining factors within our control, how will we ensure we overcome them? 

How will we use our influence where we can, to reduce constraining factors and build on enabling factors? 

How will we take account of and work around constraining factors that are not in our control? 

What experiments can we run to look at constraining factors that require innovation? 

Which of these are the most urgent? 

Which of these are the most important? 

Which of these would require the most work? 

Are there any “quick wins”? 

If desired, this action-planning can be developed into a Commissioning Development Plan.