How are your New Year’s resolutions going? So far I’ve been struggling. In fact I haven’t even started some of them! I’m thinking that maybe 1st March is a good time to begin.
Every year I have a general ambition to begin the year afresh, be more organised and manage my time and my finances more effectively. It always starts with a list which I religiously write in a nice, new notebook. The debate this year with my finances has been around how much money I’ll choose to save for my forth-coming wedding and on the flip side what therefore has to go? The handbag I have been coveting and stroking in Selfridges for a while or the daily lattes?
It’s the same with my time – too much to do with too few hours. Exercising more is probably on a lot of people’s lists, including mine and my dog’s, so is spending more time with elderly relatives (my list not the hound’s). But going out for that run and then having cakes with my Aunt Alice (in itself counterproductive) means that time spent on other chores and activities will need to reduce.
This got me thinking that all this juggling isn’t too different to the way that organisations have to manage their valuable resources. Although unlike my New Year’s resolutions, their planning isn’t optional. In the business world there are systems and processes to support such important decisions and in policing we have created a system for Resource and Demand Management to ensure that a Police Force’s resources are deployed in the right place to achieve maximum benefit whilst minimising any negative impact on other areas of the business.
Our Resource and Demand Modelling tool simulates potential changes to operational services and enables a Force to understand what the impact would be of for example, reducing officer numbers managing road traffic incidents and increasing those protecting vulnerable people.
In summary, it helps them to understand demand, threat, risk and harm and to allocate resources to the greatest priority.
I recently presented the solution to a number of sectors across Sopra Steria at our annual kick off meeting in Paris. The feedback confirmed my thinking that the model can be easily and effectively used in other organisations, e.g. recruitment or health and cross-sector. As an example, if there is a fall in the number of mental health nurses, what impact will that have on calls into a control room?
What do you think? Leave a reply below or contact me by email.
I’m now back to thinking about cakes or running? I know which is going to come out on top.
