The Implementation, Spread, and Scale Pathway
By Dr. Julia E. Moore, Executive Director, and Dr. Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation
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The process of implementation starts when you have a clearly defined WHAT you want people to do differently, and HOW people will be supported to do those things differently – in other words, when you have designed an initiative (which you can develop using the StrategEase Pathway). If you have a solid initiative with clearly articulated WHATs and HOWs, you are ready to start planning for implementation.
This is often when people start feeling incredibly lost, because there are so many different things to pay attention to when implementing. Luckily, this is the point at which you can use a model like the Implementation, Spread, and Scale Pathway. While the steps in the StrategEase pathway are somewhat linear, planning for implementation does not happen in a linear and predictable way. That’s why this pathway looks like a roadmap. It allows you to go in different directions based on the context and your needs. You are choosing the logical place to start and where to focus next.
A common place for people to start is building an implementation team. Here, we think about who's on the implementation team, who's going to be doing the work of implementation, and also who is supporting that team. We can also consider who is on support system and what does that support look like.
Another aspect in the Implementation, Spread, and Scale Pathway is assessing readiness and context. We know that readiness and context influence implementation. You can assess the readiness of your implementation setting and the contextual considerations of that implementation setting.
We also have to take on a comprehensive process of planning. In fact, in our experience, so much of the work of implementation happens when people are planning for implementation. Planning includes multiple components: planning for your adaptations, planning for implementation, and planning for sustainability. Adaptation planning involves understanding whether you're going to adapt your WHAT, or your HOW, or both. Implementation planning is about thinking through and writing up the actual implementation plan. For example, what strategies are you rolling out, and what do those look like and who's doing them? It’s also so important to think about and plan for sustainability early on in the implementation process.
A commonly missed step in implementation planning is thinking about operationalizing and refining all of the elements. This involves a lot of teamwork. It involves continuous monitoring and different cycles of improvement perhaps. Importantly, don’t forget about evaluation. How are you going to be measuring the process of implementation, your implementation quality, as well as the outcomes of implementation?
The Implementation, Spread, and Scale Pathway provides the roadmap for you to think about the different elements to plan for implementation. You can then use additional theories, models, and frameworks to enact these different steps. For example, using the Interactive Systems Framework to think about roles in the system, readiness assessments to understand and address readiness, frameworks like the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to assess the context, and sustainability assessments to plan for sustainability.
To learn more about the Implementation, Spread, and Scale pathway, join our free event, Change Journeys: Exploring the Implementation, Spread, and Scale Pathway. If you are ready to deep dive into implementation planning, join our upcoming course, Implementation, Spread, and Scale, which opens for enrollment on March 1!
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