Recently two VET/RTO consultants walked into a coffee shop (although in the interests of full disclosure, it may have been a bar!) to discuss, compare, evaluate, and reflect on their experiences and challenges. (Let’s call the consultants Maree and Matt, although in this story there are no long faces, cocktails named Eric the grasshopper or reference to individuals of varying nationalities! No jokes here!)
After all, isn’t the trigger of a new year ‘the’ time to review and reset (a plethora of LinkedIn posts certainly suggest so) – the time to learn from the past, focus on the present and plan for the future?
And with that, we identified the first challenge – shouldn’t such activity be a continuous self-awareness process - scheduled and prioritised throughout the year? Undertaken for the benefit of the organisation and its customers - not only as a response to external pressures, such as, changing policy, standards and reforms or to review compliance for a required annual declaration?
We shared similar experiences of being engaged to assist RTOs who were already in difficulty (financially and/or regulatory) as well as numerous requests for advice about, and assistance to, start up or acquire an RTO, exit an RTO, how to make an RTO ‘work’ (sustainably and compliantly), and the omnipresent ‘all about compliance’ activities, usually as a direct result of regulatory or anticipated regulatory activity.
In our reflections, we shared more than a few common observations:
- the imperative and required capability (at all levels of the organisation) to balance two sides of the same coin – business acumen and academic rigour – and critically, the ethical decision making that drives quality!
- a too frequent inability to articulate (or produce documented, reviewed or revitalised) business plans and priorities - what the year would focus on, or plans for the future (which may involve investment, resourcing, industry networking, new revenue streams, emerging opportunities and challenges)
- strategies committed to but not followed up on through actions and implementation (‘phew, that urgency/crisis is over, everyone back to normal’)
- trying to be everything to everyone with a confusing scope of registration including in-active or un-resourced scope, rather than scope targeted to region, market (cohorts), pathways or industry segments
- the costs and disruptions of re-work to fix issues after they have already occurred and a (sometimes, but thankfully not always) reluctance to do so
- inability to apply realistic service delivery costing models, fee structures or revenue strategies to existing, or in planning new programs or markets and make necessary ‘evidence based’ decisions – lot of discussion though about inadequacy of government funding and it being a driver for (limiting or poor) service delivery
- lack of genuine professional support for purchasers or sellers of RTOs (providing clear understanding of what they are getting into (such as ‘all of the above’ and more), effective due diligence – including what they are paying for and what is not of value depending on their plans and intentions, etc)
We documented our thoughts into a model for ‘Organisational Needs’ Analysis’ based on three pillars of - governance, sustainability and quality and compliance.
Check out the framework below:
In Matt’s words, an organisational analysis ‘is not just about compliance and dealing with desperate attempts to manage ASQA surveillance, it’s more about being proactive and measured whether transforming, selling or buying and should include reviewing business plans, partnerships, scope and costings’.