Abstract:

In today's complex social environment, anyone who has been assigned the task of leading a quality improvement initiative in organizational settings has to approach the process in a systematic way in order to succeed. The crucial success factor is often creating organizational alignment amongst components that constitute a well-articulated quality improvement proposal – especially if the initiative involves an educational component. This paper highlights the four key questions that allow organizational leaders to effectively envision, design, implement, and assess a meaningful quality improvement intervention that is grounded in the premise of instilling a culture of quality through an educational intervention.

The narrative starts with a discussion of challenges associated with implementing a quality improvement initiative that involves an educational component. Then the reader is presented with an analysis of the major components of the proposed change – such as: learning community context; problem statement; statement of significance; targeted outcomes; implementation time line; and evaluation methods. Finally, the narrative concludes with a synthesis structured around four key questions that allows leaders to successfully plan and execute a quality improvement initiative grounded in a learning intervention, namely:

• What do I want to change, for whom, by how much, and by when? In other words, what will success look like?
• How will I change what, for whom, by how much, and by when? In other words, how will I achieve success?
• How will I know what I am changing, for whom, by how much, and by when? In other words, how will I monitor progress against set objectives that define success?
• Has what I wanted to change, for those whom I wanted to change it, actually changed by the amount I had wanted it to change?

Keywords:

Education, leadership, quality improvement, organizational change.