Inequities in education, health care, and other social services are often rooted in systemic challenges that organizations must work together to address. Working together requires accessible methods for organizations — such as school districts and health systems — to collaborate, develop shared goals, and coordinate efforts to drive systemic change.

Continuous improvement offers a tried-and-true framework for organizational change and transformation. When paired with the power of networks to distribute leadership and spread change throughout and among organizations, continuous improvement becomes a powerful engine to drive systems improvement at scale. Yet, if not done with a focus on advancing equity, improvement efforts risk reproducing or exacerbating inequities instead of eliminating them. Furthermore, many improvement leaders find themselves in the position of learning improvement methods while also spreading and teaching them to others in their organization and community.

To address this demand, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with experts in equity, communications, and digital media, supported Shift in developing a repository of open-source videos. These videos cover a wide range of skills, from beginner to advanced topics in continuous improvement, along with accompanying templates. This resource is designed to assist leaders in enhancing their understanding, implementing, and disseminating improvement strategies within their organizations, thereby amplifying their organizational impact.

our approach

During the pandemic, Shift developed an initial series of eight videos as part of the continuous improvement practicum, Improvement Methods for Equity (IM4E). These videos aimed to help organizations learn about improvement practices. Each video was designed to simplify complex tools and concepts, making them easy to understand and share digitally. These first eight videos covered the foundational principles of continuous improvement.

In response to positive feedback and demand, Shift created an additional eight videos that focused on intermediate to advanced skills. To enhance accessibility, Shift collaborated with equity, communications, and digital media partners to create video bundles. Each bundle consisted of a brief introductory video (around 90 seconds), a teaching video (under 8 minutes), and a collection of downloadable tools and templates related to the topic. Moreover, many of these videos were translated into Spanish and featured closed captioning to make them more accessible to a wider audience.

partners

Bonsai, Minerva Communications, Impact Strategy Group, Francis Duran 

This was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The views expressed are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the funders.