Optimus Think

Travel is one of the most impacted sectors hit this year due to COVID-19. Organizations need to begin to take a critical look at what corporate travel will look like in a post-COVID world.

This Briefing Note highlights key elements of interest to our clients from the 2019 Ontario Budget announcement.

In Ontario, the health care landscape is changing. We look at integrated care delivery systems, and suggest what areas for health care system planners, health service providers, and hospitals in particular, to start their transition to these new models of care.

This briefing note addresses selected highlights from the Ontario government’s 2018 fall economic statement.

Optimus SBR’s Public Sector, Health Care and Not-For-Profit group regularly monitors policy developments at the federal, provincial and municipal level to inform its work and support clients in government, the broader public sector, and certain parts of the private and not-for-profit sectors. This Briefing Note highlights key elements of interest to our clients from yesterday’s Ontario Budget announcement.

5 Drivers of Organizational Effectiveness The goal of an effective organization is to maintain high performance and achieve desired results. It may sound straightforward but it’s not. Understanding what can […]

Feeling like you are stuck between a rock and a hard place these days? You’re not alone. Many local distribution companies (LDCs) across Ontario are under pressure from shareholders to reduce costs and maximize revenues, and from customers to offer more services and reduced rates (aka the rock).

Eliciting input from stakeholders is a fundamental component of the strategic planning process and organizations have traditionally sought out this input through public meetings, surveys and one-on-one conversations with key individuals. While these methods continue to be successful, the role of social media in the strategic planning process is an option that few organizations have tapped.

Steering committees work most of the time, but when they fail, the results can be disastrous; wasted money, conflicts of interest and missed deadlines are a few of the problems that can come up. Are you willing to take the risk?

Already in 2012, a great amount of material has been produced concerning Patient-Based Funding (PBF) and the Health Based Allocation Model (HBAM). Most of this however has been either basic information from the Ministry or opinion from a variety of stakeholders within the health care system.

Based on current trends, humanity will require twice as many resources than our planet can support by the mid-2030s. While waste is gathering on land, in the air, and water, there is considerable impact on the world’s ecosystems and resources. The problem isn’t as simple as consuming too much, rather the rate of consumption is systematically increasing each year.

Canada, like much of the world, has undergone dramatic change in its payment landscape over the past three decades. Perhaps the best illustration of this transformation is the displacement of cheques by electronic alternatives as the primary non-cash payment method.

Successfully joining, managing, buying, partnering or merging with an organization depends on a great many factors. Indeed, aligning the different forces and communities within any organization is a complicated task. We are often tempted to focus on the factors that have immediately measurable dollar values, but intangibles are often among the real causes of success and failure.

Perhaps the simple answer for this question is … Yes! However, what may not be common is our response to the change process. Hopson and Adams (1976) postulated that an individual coping with change goes through a seven-phase process:

More conservative businesses seek to manage risk, while more daring ones seek to actually leverage the risk and harness the opportunities that go along with it. The emergence of these different “cultures of risk” is psychological in nature, as different organizations perceive risks in different manners. And then, based on the perceived magnitude of the risk, together with the perceived ability to realize a reward, each organization has a different reaction.

Many organizations use both internal and external consultants, as different requirements arise. Indeed, some use hybrid internal-external teams, with an eye to leveraging deep institutional knowledge and memory as well as external perspective, objectivity and expertise.

Market Factor Strategies are built on maximizing offense-oriented business line priorities. Conversely, Non-Market Factor Strategies focus on minimizing negative impacts and liabilities. As a result, responses to Non-Market factors (led by governance, compliance and risk management functions among others) are all too often treated as boxes to be routinely checked off.