Policy Research, Development & Analysis
Policy is a preferred or prescribed rule or procedure to simplify and standardize decision-making objectively based on principles and values.
​​
Policy can be expressed in many forms, from legislation, regulations, policies, programs, protocols, procedures, and guidelines, based on the organization’s context, needs, and flexibility or discretion.
What We Offer
Upstream Management Solutions can work with your organization to
-
Critically assess your current policy-making capacity
-
Build a scalable policy development process and resources
-
Add "Right Touch Regulation" risk identification and proportionate interventions
-
Research, validate and analyze problems
-
Design and develop viable options
-
Facilitate stakeholder engagement
-
Provide staff and volunteer training
-
Prepare implementation and evaluation plans to bring your policy goals to life.
User Experience/Human- Centered Design
User Experience/Human-Centered Design (aka Design Thinking) is a powerful methodology to solve complex problems by focusing primarily on the current or future users (customers, clients, patients, passengers, etc.) and to solve their unmet challenges.
​
Every interaction (such as pre-sales, sale, onboarding, annual reporting, and customer service) can be explored in depth to identify its users' “pain points” and to ideate, prototype, test, and implement viable and durable solutions.
What We Offer
Upstream Management Solutions can work with your organization to:
-
Assess your customer/user-centricity and interaction points
-
Identify your current and future users of your products, programs, or services
-
Understand their “pain points” in interactions with your organization (a Journey Map)
-
Ideate, prototype, and test solutions
-
To set up solutions for successful piloting, rollout and evaluation
-
Provide User Experience design training
Learning & Development
Changing markets, regulatory requirements, knowledge, and technologies require organizations to continue to invest in learning and development of all their employees.
​
There must be alignment between an organization’s overall and strategic goals, as well as helping individual employees or managers to continue to develop their skills and proficiency.
​
Effective learning and development must be immediately practical and contribute to employee and managerial performance, not just theory.
What We Offer
Upstream Management Solutions can work with your organization to:
-
Assess your overall learning and development framework
-
Identify your strategic business needs for employee development
-
Identify who needs to be engaged in new learning or development
-
Develop the learning and development content with subject matter experts, or source it externally
-
Develop the appropriate formats and instructional design
-
Identify systems to provide the learning content and allow supervisors to evaluate the results
Strategy/Strategic Planning
Within the broader public sector, strategy is about identifying the Why, What, and How of directional change to improve an organization’s performance effectiveness or efficiency against its mandate, or to move it to a different mandate through specific activities or choices.
​
Strategy can take many forms, from corporate Strategic Plans to aligned strategies at all levels of the organization.
What We Offer
Upstream Management Solutions can work with your organization to:
-
Critically review your current Strategic Plan (or whether you need one)
-
Conduct market research, environmental scans and trend analysis
-
Review your organization’s change capacity, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
-
Formulate strategic change directional options and scenarios
-
Develop or refine strategic missions, visions, and goals
-
Review or develop strategies at all levels of the organization
-
Develop KPIs, performance monitoring and adjustments
Engaging with Stakeholders and Partners
A critical success for organizations is having meaningful two-way dialogue with users, customers/clients, and other related organizations. These strategies ensure that organizations are connected with and understand their users/customers’ needs and interests, stay up-to-date on emerging issues, and can co-create on durable solutions.
In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, organizations can’t usually solve problems only by themselves. That’s why partnerships with other organizations with shared jurisdictions or interests, either on a project or more comprehensive basis are so vital.
What We Offer
Upstream Management Solutions can work with your organization to:
-
Critically assess your current stakeholder and partner engagement capacity
-
Understand your ecosystem of related users and potential partner organizations, and their roles and opportunities
-
Identify incoming and outgoing requests for comment or consultation
-
Establish regular communication and collaboration channels
-
Build relationships with stakeholders and potential partners
-
Build the supporting infrastructure and resources