Organisations are having to change and adapt. Many private sector businesses have gone through that processes following the financial crisis.
Now the public and not for profit sectors are having to deal with the realities of austerity.
There are many demands and a lot of talk about the need to do things differently, re-design services, eliminate waste and improve efficiency.
Personally I’m a big advocate of finding better ways of serving the public, customer or whoever uses services.
The thing that worries me is the false belief that there is some magic wand you can wave and everything gets better overnight.
I’ll call it the big change myth. 
If we look at life outside of organisations we know there is no instant solution whether it’s diet, fitness, achieving some personal goal.
What we tend to do is set a goal, put a plan in place and take a number of small steps to achieving the goal. Along the way we encounter some challenges, setbacks and disappointments. We either try something else or a different way.
Even if we don’t get to the exact goal we want, we are in a much better position than when we started.
Perhaps this is a mindset or perspective that those hard working and dedicated people working in the public and not for profit sectors need to adopt right now.
Rather than focusing on making a big breakthrough fast and being disappointed, focus instead of making a series of small improvements.
So what might that mean in practical terms?
If you are working in Finance make a commitment to better understand what happens in the wider organisation by spending an hour each week in another part of the organisation.
If you are in A&E think about one small change you might make in assessing elderly patients.
If you are a GP think about identifying the groups of patients you could routinely triage for a telephone or Skype consultation.
If you are working in a government department look at one process that you might streamline.
Looking for the big transformation might seem like a great idea. In reality a series of smaller wins from a bigger constituent of staff is more likely to produce a better result.
Goals and Achievements work in partnership with public and not for profit organisations to facilitate and support change, improvement and best use of resources.