I have learned that in the business world, a significant amount of time is spent doing important, yet extremely redundant work. Often, this is the creation of policies, procedures, and guidelines that are necessary for effective operations, but take time away from being able to engage with your staff and truly guide people in becoming better at what they do.
In an effort to help alleviate this problem in some way, I have begun posting documents and resources that I have created over the years and I do not claim any copyrights or other restrictions on the distribution of the information. What I hope to accomplish is to allow you to use these documents to streamline your operations…not so your job becomes easy, but so you have more time to train and motivate others, the tasks essential to long-term organizational success.
Please feel free to use the following documents as you wish. You do not need to credit me or ITPodcast.org in any way. If you have any useful (non-copyrighted) tools or templates that can be of assistance to other healthcare leaders, please email those tools to me at spencer@itpodcast.org and I will post them here for others to use. When you send your email, if you have interesting or innovative methods for turning an otherwise mundane tool into something transformational, please let me know so I can include that information.
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Document Title |
Purpose |
Contributor |
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System administrators have access to a large amount of confidential data stored on systems throughout the organization’s technology infrastructure. This document is intended to educate system administrators on the importance of ethical and conscientious behavior in the pursuit of technology administrator duties. |
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Provides a framework to publish basic standards for technology hardware and software. Does not include any proprietary data that could potentially be used to circumvent security procedures, but allows employees across the organization to intelligently discuss technology requirements during early technology vendor discussions. |
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Covey’s quadrants is a tool used to identify urgency and importance of the multitude of tasks a department undertakes. This tool is not just for information technology departments, but can be used in any department. A good exercise is to have staff identify where each task the department is undertaking should reside within the matrix. The manager should perform the same exercise separately from the staff. Comparing the results of the staff’s perceptions and the manager’s perceptions often reveal very different ideas of the department’s priorities, and more importantly, the urgency of those priorities. |
(idea courtesy of Covey of course) |
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Generic Organizational Chart
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I am constantly amazed at how many highly skilled and extremely smart individuals struggle with documenting something as simple as an organizational chart. Too often, organizational charts omit information that is extremely important to the variety of stakeholders and audiences that look at these documents.
This organizational chart is built in Visio, but I have also included a PDF copy for you. This is the org chart that I developed at YKHC in Alaska. There are two tabs (or two pages in the PDF version) in this document. The first is the standard organizational chart; the second is an organization functional diagram. Both are important. The organizational chart shows reporting relationships, names, and positions and is the organizational format most everyone is familiar with. In this situation, the document is color coded to identify management, non-management, contract, and different positions requiring any type of certifications.
The second tab identifies the core competencies required for each position within the specific organization, in this case a technology department. This often overlooked information is important because this is a tool you can use to make sure your succession planning requirements are understood. Having the graphical representation provides readers an easy way to identify, at a very basic level, the requirements necessary for advancing within your organization. |
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Technology departments should have service level agreements defining how the department handles the various types of calls that come into the department. Unfortunately, departments often do a poor job of communicating what service level agreements are, and why they are important to the customer. This document is a narrative document intended to be published to staff throughout the organization with the intention of creating an understanding of what an SLA is, and how customers can engage with technology to resolve problems. |
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Collecting data is useless unless you report the results. This simple Excel document collects the total number of tickets per week, categorized by priority, and collects how many of those tickets were closed within the constraints of the service level agreements. This document is intended to be published organization-wide so everyone knows how the department is performing relative to the promises published in the technology service level agreement. |
Thank you for contributing.
Spencer Hamons
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Document Title |
Purpose |
Contributor |
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System administrators have access to a large amount of confidential data stored on systems throughout the organization’s technology infrastructure. This document is intended to educate system administrators on the importance of ethical and conscientious behavior in the pursuit of technology administrator duties. |
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Basic Technology Standards |
Provides a framework to publish basic standards for technology hardware and software. Does not include any proprietary data that could potentially be used to circumvent security procedures, but allows employees across the organization to intelligently discuss technology requirements during early technology vendor discussions. |
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Covey’s Quadrants Template |
Covey’s quadrants is a tool used to identify urgency and importance of the multitude of tasks a department undertakes. This tool is not just for information technology departments, but can be used in any department. A good exercise is to have staff identify where each task the department is undertaking should reside within the matrix. The manager should perform the same exercise separately from the staff. Comparing the results of the staff’s perceptions and the manager’s perceptions often reveal very different ideas of the department’s priorities, and more importantly, the urgency of those priorities. |
(idea courtesy of Covey of course) |
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Generic Organizational Chart
Visio File PDF Version |
I am constantly amazed at how many highly skilled and extremely smart individuals struggle with documenting something as simple as an organizational chart. Too often, organizational charts omit information that is extremely important to the variety of stakeholders and audiences that look at these documents.
This organizational chart is built in Visio, but I have also included a PDF copy for you. This is the org chart that I developed at YKHC in Alaska. There are two tabs (or two pages in the PDF version) in this document. The first is the standard organizational chart; the second is an organization functional diagram. Both are important. The organizational chart shows reporting relationships, names, and positions and is the organizational format most everyone is familiar with. In this situation, the document is color coded to identify management, non-management, contract, and different positions requiring any type of certifications.
The second tab identifies the core competencies required for each position within the specific organization, in this case a technology department. This often overlooked information is important because this is a tool you can use to make sure your succession planning requirements are understood. Having the graphical representation provides readers an easy way to identify, at a very basic level, the requirements necessary for advancing within your organization. |
Spencer Hamons |
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Publication to Customers of Service Level Agreements |
Technology departments should have service level agreements defining how the department handles the various types of calls that come into the department. Unfortunately, departments often do a poor job of communicating what service level agreements are, and why they are important to the customer. This document is a narrative document intended to be published to staff throughout the organization with the intention of creating an understanding of what an SLA is, and how customers can engage with technology to resolve problems. |
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Service Desk SLA Report |
Collecting data is useless unless you report the results. This simple Excel document collects the total number of tickets per week, categorized by priority, and collects how many of those tickets were closed within the constraints of the service level agreements. This document is intended to be published organization-wide so everyone knows how the department is performing relative to the promises published in the technology service level agreement. |
Spencer Hamons |
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