12 Reflections on Outcome Based Thinking & Ending Homelessness
We have had several assignments lately that have required thinking through how organizations are designed relative to the pursuit of ending homelessness. If there is a common theme amongst these projects it is that the organizations or communities are not designed to get the outcome that they wish they were getting. Furthermore, there are a number of things that get in their way of optimal success. So, I wanted to explore with you 12 ideas and strategies related to ending homelessness using outcome-based thinking.
1. Name the outcome you want
There is beauty in stating the obvious. This is one of those life instances. Name the difference you want to see if all you are doing to end homelessness is realized. You can do this by parts of the service delivery system (outreach, shelters, Rapid ReHousing, Permanent Supportive Housing, etc.) or in relation to other partners, or even the people that use the services.
The problem I see? We are quick to only point out the tasks without asking ourselves what difference there will be if all of those tasks are realized. And on the flipside of this, we rarely break down the outcome into enough meaningful tasks where it actually feels like progress is being made fast enough.
2. Take out the trash
Noise. Distractions. Garbage.
You have to take out the trash - get rid of the ideas, work and energy sucks that get in the way - if you want to have enough energy to achieve success. You have to decide what you are NOT going to pay attention to; what you are not going to do; what is not worthy of your attention.
Then deliberately and explicitly indicate your intentions. Taking out the trash is bold and necessary for communities to succeed – especially those that have been trying to be all things to all people for far too long.
3. Move from vague to specific – as fast as makes sense
You know how to move from vague to specific rather quickly in your personal life, but fail to put it into practice in a dedicated way in your work of ending homelessness. Let me give you an example from your personal life:
I am hungry
I want Italian food
I want pasta
I want take-out
I want the food from Volpe’s
See, you can go from being hungry to deciding what type of food and from where via take-out relatively quickly. Those are the sort of everyday quick decisions you make. They are generally fast. You know there are decisions in your life that may not be as fast as deciding what’s for dinner and from where, but that you still make relatively quickly.
Let me give you an example of moving from vague to specific in our line of work:
I want to end homelessness
I want to focus on unsheltered homelessness
I want to understand what our last five PIT Count and street outreach data shows
I want more people housed from living outdoors starting with the sickest and most vulnerable people that have been homeless longest
I want the people housed from outdoors to be housed quickly
I want our community priority for PSH in our coordinated entry to reflect the sickest and most vulnerable living outdoors
Get out of the mindset of everything being too big, needing extensive processing or considerable deliberation. Keep moving from vague to specific in every single part of your homeless service system. And yes, you can move from vague to specific on more than one area of interest at a time.
4. Name the moving parts
A pet peeve of mine is when I ask how someone is doing, and their response is “busy”. “Busy” is a state of being, not an emotion. What I think they are trying to convey is that they have lots on the go, though I don’t know how they feel about it.
What I have seen recently in the organizations and communities we have been working with is that they also seem to be in a perpetual state of being busy, but struggle to clearly articulate all of the things they are busy with – and they can’t seem to separate out administrative moving parts (for example: HR; budget), from operational moving parts (for example: staff schedule; ordering supplies), from project moving parts (for example: a new shelter diversion pilot; a discharge initiative with the local hospital). And because they cannot name all of the moving parts, they struggle to prioritize, to know where to put their energy, to take out the trash as I discussed earlier, and how to celebrate success.
5. Name what you are waiting for
A number of the things we do require input, sign-off, or other tasks and activities being completed by others. If you don’t name what you need from whom by which time, you might as well be waiting for Godot. The answers to what you are waiting for do not self-resolve. And let’s face it – what may be a priority for you does not mean it is a priority for the person you are waiting for, and that may or may not be outside your influence or control.
So, focus on what you CAN control. If you name what you actually need from whom and when, you have the ability to establish priorities and work flow around that rather than being in an unmanageable situation in spite of it.
6. Growth does not equal success
We have seen many organizations grow. And grow. And grow. Some of this is seemingly justifiable, but a lot of this is not. More staff and a big budget only makes sense if the existing staff and budget are used to maximum effectiveness. The problem these days is that every new initiative or new piece of regulation is interpreted as needing more staff rather than re-profiling existing staff differently.
We also need some creative destruction as part of the annual workflow – what can we commit to stop doing in order to free up the staff and money to do something new and innovative. In other words, we can continue to see innovation and champions of new ideas with the resources we have, rather than thinking innovation can only happen if we have more resources.
7. Don’t waste time chasing what others have
Competition kills progress for most organizations and communities. If you are naturally competitive, you would, of course, thrive when compared to others and constantly be in search of how you could have all of the resources that others have to do their work. But if you are not a naturally competitive person (which, let’s be clear, "competition" often translates to “be just like them, but better”), then the comparison mantra is a sham.
You need to be the best organization/community in YOUR context. Your best will be influenced by factors that are completely irrelevant in comparing yourself to others and then chasing after the resources that they have to do their work. Too many organizations and communities waste time and energy chasing what they don’t have without making sure they are doing dynamite work with the resources they do have at their fingertips.
8. Be a hope engineer through innovation
Innovators are hope engineers. They lead us to a place where we believe improvement is possible. They have no illusions of getting it right all of the time. Heck, what they really prove is that you can fail a lot with the best of intentions.
Engineers of hope use innovation to find solutions. They don’t waste time naming problems that they cannot fix or are outside their control to fix. They focus on that which they can actually influence.
This person is very different from the charismatic leader who keeps people’s spirits up in difficult times. That person can also be helpful. And many organizations and communities have generally optimistic people. What is missing in most of the places we have been working is innovators. “Some Other Place” is not the name of a community or organization, and they don’t always have the answer to the thing that needs innovation in your place.
9. Be bad at some things, and just own it
Let. Go. Of. Perfectionism.
It is about time we acknowledge there are some things that you, your organization, and your community just suck at. Own that shit. Don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Don’t think that working harder is going to be the answer to sucking, because that could just mean more effort put into sucking larger.
Imagine the community or organization that had the chutzpah to say, “Hey, we really stink at figuring out day services, so we are going to stop working on that right now and put that energy into being better at Rapid ReHousing because we seem to be doing some decent work there and could get even better at it.”
At the personal level, delegate to the strengths of others. Publicly own that some elements of ending homelessness are not your strength. Ask for help. Don’t be ashamed that you are not amazing at everything. Nobody is.
At the organization level, if there is another organization that gets results better than yours over and over again, despite your program improvement efforts, then let go. It may be better that the other organization does more of that type of work with better results than you just getting your piece of the pie but sucking at it.
10. Take walks of gratitude
The heaviest thing to lift is your own spirits when they are down. This work is hard. You are bound to be rattled and pulled down from time to time. In most of our work lately we have struggled to find an intentional process of finding joy in the work and being grateful for what is working well.
We recommend the 10 minute daily walk of gratitude. Every afternoon take 10 minutes to go for a walk and just focus on that which you are grateful for in your community’s or organization’s work to end homelessness. The hard work becomes easier if you take time out of every single day to find something to be grateful for in the work. It will also make the down times less frequent, and the Herculean task of lifting your own spirits will be more rare.
11. Expectations influence experiences
You have heard of self-fulfilling prophecy, and this is really what the focus is here. Too many organizations and communities lately fail to realize that they expectations influence the experience – or another way of looking at it, attitude influences outputs and outcomes. Think your Coordinated Entry system is going to be messy out the gate? It will be. Think your PIT Count is getting stale without enthusiastic volunteers, then that is what you are going to get.
It is said that systems are perfectly designed to get the outcomes they get. I believe the same can be said for the emotional experience of our work. The lower your expectations, the worse the experience. When lives are on the line in our work it seems incredibly selfish to lower expectations.
12. Don’t fear a different, outsider perspective
Of course you don’t know the answers to all of your organization’s or community’s problems. Heck, you probably don’t even know the questions you would need to ask yourself to even think about the problems you have differently. You and your colleagues may have spent hours upon hours in meeting after meeting; established subcommittee after subcommittee. But if you don’t have fresh thinking or an alternate perspective that comes from having a different, outsider perspective engage with you, you will be at a loss to see all that you need to see, to know all you need to know, to think all you need to think – and fail in some instances to isolate a number of possible solutions to what confronts you. Let go of isolationism. Find that local person that doesn’t know your business well to ask the questions or engage in problems differently – the local outsider. Or bring in someone from a different community to help you gain a different perspective on the problems you have been unable to solve.
Let's Review the Basics of Effective Coordinated Entry
Tick. Tock. Time is passing as your community moves forward to being in compliance with coordinated entry requirements. Or you are a community in a jurisdiction other than the United States where you are doing coordinated entry not because you have to, but because you know it is the right thing to do.
The whole point of coordinated entry, in a nutshell, is to get the right youth, adult or family (including those that have experienced domestic violence) to the right support and housing program, in the right order, to end their homelessness permanently.
Seems like a no brainer. But then there is confusion. So let us clear some of that up and go back to basics on a few things.
To make this happen, you will need to have a detailed inventory of all of the housing programs and services that exist in your community. You can watch a short video about that here.
You will also need to know what your community's priorities are so that you are investing your time get the targeted population document ready. For example, if your community says your top priority for PSH are those that are chronically homeless, been homeless 5 or more years, have tri-morbidity, are sleeping in unsheltered or unsafe places, and have a VI-SPDAT score of 13 or above, then that is the group that you want to focus your time and attention to first to make sure all of their paperwork ready so that they are on your priority list. We know there can be confusion between by-name lists, coordinated entry lists, and priority lists, so we produced a short video that you can watch here.
You will need an assessment tool. Whether that is the VI-SPDAT or some other tool, there are certain things you should look for in selecting and using your assessment tool. A good assessment tool should:
Be grounded in evidence and be rigorously tested.
Be easy to administer.
Assist with identifying different levels and types of housing supports.
Include the voice of persons with lived experience in its creation.
Be sensitive to culture, race, gender, and various types of homelessness.
Reinforce a trauma-informed approach to service delivery.
Transcend different population groups.
Work for YOUR community, YOUR principles, and YOUR prioritization process.
The results of the assessment tool should inform part of you decision-making process, but should not be the ultimate decision-maker. (As we note frequently with the SPDAT suite of products, that last three letters of the acronym stand for Decision Assistance Tool, not Decision Making Tool).
You will need to determine access points of when and how the assessment is administered. These can be fixed sites or mobile or a combination thereof, and can include virtual access points or portals. Both your assessment tool and your access points should reflect what your community's top priorities are so that you increase the likelihood of reaching them and addressing their needs. For example, it would make no sense to have one fixed access point with very limited access that requires potential candidates to show up in person if your intention is to serve very vulnerable people living unsheltered as your top priority for PSH.
Finally, in terms of the basics, you will need to pick the Coordinated Entry model that works best for your community and your priorities. There are three main types of coordinated entry models, each with their own pros and cons. You can see a brief overview of them in this video here.
We hope this "back to basics" blog is helpful for those of you in the home stretch on coordinated entry. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and let us know. Or, if you need more detailed consulting assistance to help you reach the finish line, please also reach out info@orgcode.com.
The Importance of Lifelong Learning
One of the great privileges of my work is the ability to strengthen lifelong learning within myself, and to share the knowledge that I have with others. As you know, we deliver a lot of training at OrgCode, and when we have the chance to revisit communities after training - often months or even years later - we can see if what was learned translated into action. Sometimes we have multi-year engagements with organizations or communities and we can see growth incrementally over time. And then there is the conference circuit - especially state conferences - where I will complete my 9th in just the past few months later this week. All of this comes down to the importance of lifelong learning. Why do we need it? What should it look like?
Lifelong learning enhances motivation to improve job performance. In our line of work, the difference between improved job performance can be the difference between life and death when it comes to very vulnerable people. The more people voluntarily expand their knowledge and practice, the more committed they are to see better outcomes.
Lifelong learning helps with our immunity to group think and the propensity to equate experience with expertise. Where group think is concerned, we quickly settle into habits and a strong desire to put convergent thinking ahead of divergent thinking. We need to expand our thinking to find new solutions to seemingly impossible problems rather than reducing to one possible answer or thinking we must have trade-offs in all instances. Lifelong learning helps us expand our thinking to "both/and" rather than "either/or". Similarly, when we have been in the field for a great length of time we start to think that experience leads to one best answer as opposed to opening ourselves up to alternative answers and responses to the issues and problems at hand.
Lifelong learning allows us to better read new information and respond to stimuli in ways that open us up to complex problem solving. In responding to new information, a lifelong learner is less apt to reduce the understanding of the information to just one mode of thought or reasoning. Staying abreast of the main currents of thought and practice in various disciplines allows the lifelong learner to use abductive approaches to problem solving rather than deductive or inductive logic in all situations. Take, for example, those communities responding to new street drugs in a way they have not before (once upon a time it was crack cocaine, now it is likely spice, k2, fentanyl or opioids). The lifelong learner addresses this from an approach of looking at the entire system of care and its response through abductive logic, where another person may just see the crisis and the necessity to equip staff with immediate life saving techniques.
What does this all mean for communities pulling together training or planning conferences?
Yes, you will continue to need a number of core competency trainings; the 101 classes if you will. People will still need foundations in Housing First, Rapid ReHousing, Motivational Interviewing, Trauma-Informed Care, etc. And hopefully those will continue to be delivered by a range of competent individuals that have stayed abreast of new research, development, and practice. However, you need to go beyond this.
One of the findings in research on staff retention and staff commitment to vision and mission, is that those staff that feel invested in and challenged to expand skills are more likely to stay and be happy. For those reasons, you need to move beyond the 101 caliber of training and education opportunities to making the 201, 301, 401 and even more advanced training and engagement opportunities available. For example, maybe you need a facilitated discussion with Rapid ReHousing practitioners about ethics in practice when there are damages to the unit while trying to maintain positive landlord relations for other program participants. Or maybe you need to dig deeper into the difference between person-directed care and person-centred care. Or maybe you need to explore 10 case studies where Assertive Engagement was practiced in outreach and the implications for community partner relations when one or more other entity did not see the same harms requiring engagement in this manner. Or maybe you need to move beyond quality data capture in HMIS to using that data to improve practice as part of a reporting cycle. The list can go on and on.
Conference organizers and those thinking about a community's training needs are in a fantastic position to support and promote lifelong learning. But it is time in our development as an industry to move from the basics to the intermediate and advanced subject matter to keep lifelong learners engaged and challenged. If we don't, some of the most talented practitioners we have will jump ship to the place where they will feel more nurtured and challenged.
What's Your Motivation?
Not what brought you into it 10 years ago or 5 years ago or 6 months ago or whatever. Why do you still do this work TODAY?
This work is generally thankless, yet critically important. While everyone else is running out of the proverbial fire, you wake up each morning and decide to run into the fire. You believe the people you serve are worthiest of your highest esteem. You believe that biography does not equal destiny. You believe that people can have a better life and housing situation than their current circumstances suggest today.
But why are you still motivated?
This week, I suspect, another service organization or your own team will let you down. This week, I suspect, a program participant will be less than happy with the organization you work for, or your performance itself. This week, I suspect, you will help a person or family realize their goal of housing and not even be met with a kind word.
If you still have motivation to do the work it is because you have been able to attach an emotional meaning to the work. I don't mean a general feeling. I mean an attachment to what you are doing every single day. I mean the sort of attachment that fuels your drive.
What I know about people and organizations that are motivated to do this work is that they thrive within the certainty they have created. They are unrelentingly focused on results, because the results fuel their certainty.
I know that organization that are motivated respond to uncertainty differently. They don't see surprises as problems. They see them as opportunities to learn and grow. They thrive in the ability to stay focused on their mission regardless of circumstances.
I know that organizations that are motivated attach significance to their work. It is not meaningful activities. It is every activity that progresses an individual or family towards housing is a significant achievement. That is shared across the team and the organization. That significance is grounded in the reality of what each story of each household they serve represents.
I know that organizations that are motivated build connections with their team, their broader community, and each household they have the privilege of serving. And the work "privilege" is not an accidental one. They see it a privilege to serve others and build connection from there, rather than seeing program participants as being privileged to be served by them.
I know that organizations that are motivated keep growing. They do not rest on the laurels of past achievements. They keep pursuing getting better. And better. And better. There is no stop to their pursuit of awesomeness. And they do this by looking within themselves rather than using a competition mantra to get there.
Finally, I know that organizations that are motivated give of themselves relentlessly but appropriately. To use a cliche sports analogy, they leave it all on the field each day, but also know when to shut it off at the end of the work day to practice routine self-care. That routine self-care (as opposed to fleeting self care or episodic self care) is instrumental to maintaining the "it" factor each and every day that they do the work.
How do organizations get to this place? Usually through superb leaders, cultivated investment in awesomeness, and external assistance to facilitate their ability. But there is nothing that stops an organization and the sum of its parts to wake up tomorrow and decide to be awesome. It all comes down to acknowledging motivation.
An Introduction from Ann on Her Role With OrgCode - Why Leadership?
Ann takes over the blog this week to outline her role as "Leader in Residence" with OrgCode and outline her passion to improve and develop leaders working to end homelessness.
Since Iain announced last week that I am coming on board with the team at OrgCode as a Leader in Residence, lots of people have taken time to welcome me back to the work of ending homelessness and to ask about what I might be working on. After a few months off, I found that I am eager to start working on projects that have two non-negotiable components: that the project is impactful, and that the project itself allows me to feel joy in my work. It has been a while since I have had the chance to actively choose projects that meet both of those criteria, and I am taking full advantage of the opportunity.
It has become crystal clear to me over the last several years that leadership at all levels is maybe the most important component to making positive and lasting change towards ending homelessness. And I am not talking about a cult of personality – sometimes confused with leadership. While a charismatic champion can often be seen as leading change, I have personally seen many instances where once that charismatic person leaves things fall apart because there is no structure to support the change and no other leaders empowered to step in and do the hard work.
No, what I am talking about is the getting-your-hands-dirty, making-the-tough-decisions, supporting-and-inspiring-the-people-around-you kind of leadership. Communities need more than one leader, and need them at all levels. That is how we make and support the changes needed to end homelessness, and how those changes become sustainable over time. Being a good leader is hard work that takes a good amount of introspection, humility and willingness to take risks. It is a responsibility and a privilege. And it is something that can change your life and the lives of those around you as well as those whom we serve. At least that has been my experience.
I can say that OrgCode’s Leadership Academies and other leadership development work – in my experience – are about all of the components that serve to build the human capital structure needed to end homelessness. Because they get that it can have a big impact. And helping people realize their leadership capacity can be a joyful process.
So while I am not on board as a full time staff member at OrgCode, what I hope we can achieve together through my residency is further development of real tools and thoughtful interactions that help us all find the intersection between joy in the privilege of our work and lasting and sustainable impact – through leadership development.
Ann Oliva is OrgCode's Leader in Residence
At our first Leadership Academy in 2015, OrgCode brought together a cohort of professionals dedicated to ending homelessness to learn more about how to be authentic, thoughtful and successful leaders in their communities. In addition to two days of content presented by Iain, we heard from a couple of guest speakers – including Ann Oliva, who took time away from her day job at HUD to talk to the cohort about her leadership journey. In 2016, Ann came back to talk to the new group, and in those two years she fell in love with the idea of helping other professionals hone their leadership skills and therefore get one step closer to reaching their goals. Earlier this year, Ann announced she was leaving HUD to decompress and reflect for a few months before rejoining our collective work towards ending homelessness.
OrgCode is pleased to announce that, beginning this month, Ann will be joining us in a formal capacity as a Leader in Residence, and will be consulting with OrgCode on our professional development and coaching projects. Please join me in welcoming Ann to the team!
If you have been living under a rock (or another country), Ann’s tenure with HUD represents one of the most innovative and transformative eras, leaving an indelible mark on how we think about and respond to homelessness. Through her leadership as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs at HUD, and in the previous positions she held at HUD in her ten year commitment to the federal agency, without a doubt Ann was instrumental in steering communities towards ending homelessness.
The merry misfits of OrgCode are happy to have Ann with us a Leader in Residence. In the theme of leadership development and coaching, Ann is able to provide new service offerings to OrgCode clients old and new:
Leadership training and mentoring: if your community is looking for an onsite coach and facilitator to help you work through barriers and focus on positive change, with remote coaching and mentoring before, after or between visits, then we would encourage to reach out to see how Ann can assist you. Further, through Ann, OrgCode offers a second coach in addition to Iain to work one on one with leaders through individualized coaching. Ann would be of specific benefit to senior executives and managers in non-profits, board chairs, and emerging women leaders.
Intersection between strategic thinking, management and leadership on goals to end homelessness: Leadership and management require related but not identical skill sets, and it can be tricky to navigate between the two. It becomes more difficult when combined with the need for strategic thinking and problem solving. All of these skills are necessary for meeting desired goals. Helping goal-oriented individuals, organizations or communities understand how to create a vision, develop a robust and innovative plan, navigate difficult decisions and priorities, understand risk and execute the plan can make a significant impact on the success towards a specific goal. If this is where your community is at and need some individualized attention to get you through, then Ann would be of specific value to you.
Sharing the thoughts in her head: Look for Ann to produce blog posts, white papers, and articles with OrgCode, sharing the knowledge she already has and testing new ideas and innovations. Ann will also make presentations at the local and national level on homelessness with a broad range of interested parties. It is entirely possible Ann and Iain will start a podcast too.
Ann is a bold, brave thinker. She operates through a lens of social justice. She calls it as she sees it. She wants to end homelessness and knows how to help communities get there. If you are interested in seeing how Ann can be of service to your community in leadership training and mentoring, strategic thinking, and/or, managing the goals of ending homelessness, please reach out to info@OrgCode.com