In working with organisations using business narrative, one of the objectives is to identify a suite of interventions intended to move things in the desired direction.  Often the interventions appear insignificant, especially to those who didn’t participate; but with complex issues little things can make a big difference.

We supported the Department of Family and Community Services in a narrative project last year to evaluate their provision of research services to client departments.  On Friday I chatted with Nerida Hart and Tracey Bicknell from FacS who gave a great example of how one of the interventions identified has significantly affected their business.

The intervention was to call clients a week after providing research services to check if their requirements had been satisfied, and to address situations where clients weren’t quite satisfied but didn’t want to ‘hassle’ them for extra work (a theme identified in the sensemaking workshop). As it turns out, the courtesy call has resulted in lots of follow-on research requests from clients and has made a big step towards achieving the consultancy-style research service FaCS have been trying to establish.  This is a great example of how small interventions can make a big difference.