Charting a Path to the Future: HM Health Solutions
How can design thinking help facilitate a better planning process for future growth?
Client
HM Health Solutions
Project
Using visual thinking to facilitate productive conversations
Each year HM Health Solutions (HMHS) holds joint planning sessions with its health plan partners to define a set portfolio of initiatives that grow and continuously improve HMHS’ leading product: the Enterprise Health Solution.
HMHS used different approaches to joint strategic planning, but had yet to find the right one. Consultants needed a facilitation process that would help them to efficiently collect the information they needed to build a consensus-driven portfolio that worked for all investing partners.
ThoughtForm drew on our over 40 years of facilitation and business design expertise to create a custom design-based facilitation approach for HMHS: a series of design techniques, visual thinking exercises, and custom methods that HMHS consultants used to optimize the portfolio planning process. In 2017 alone, HMHS consultants used the facilitation approach to generate a portfolio of initiatives worth over $150 million in new capabilities.
Who did we help?
HM Health Solutions (HMHS) delivers business solutions to health plan payers so they can run their organizations efficiently in a competitive and ever-changing market. By offering cutting-edge technology and unparalleled industry knowledge, HMHS meets the many operational needs of health plan payers. HMHS is partnered with 12 health plans serving 10 million members. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, HMHS has more than 3,500 employees.
A visual thinking approach
Created facilitation exercises and a facilitation toolkit to support HMHS consultants during planning sessions.
Before creating the toolkit and exercises, ThoughtForm and HMHS collaborated to define the information that HMHS consultants needed to collect from health plan partners in order to have successful sessions.
By defining the ideal outcomes first, ThoughtForm was able to design a custom toolkit of engaging exercises, activities, and templates that allowed session participants to use both divergent and convergent thinking techniques. These thinking techniques helped consultants to supercharge innovation activities and see a greater return on time invested in the sessions.
In all, the toolkit included four exercises, five facilitation support tools (including HMHS-branded exercise templates), a facilitation checklist, and a workshop takeaway booklet.
Conducted two facilitation workshops to train HMHS consultants on design-based facilitation best practices.
ThoughtForm hosted two facilitation training workshops to teach HMHS consultants about design-based facilitation and the custom facilitation toolkit.
Each workshop began by showcasing the principles of design-based facilitation. Up until this point, joint partner planning had consisted of a series of presentations where HMHS shared information with their audience. Now, with a new mindset and strategically designed approach, the planning meetings would be interactive, facilitated sessions through which HMHS could collect information from their audience to achieve a clear goal. This mindset shift was essential to producing the outcomes that consultants needed—as well as an enjoyable partner experience.
Helped HMHS consultants prepare for joint strategic planning sessions by hosting mock planning exercises.
Once HMHS consultants learned about design-based facilitation techniques and how to use their facilitation toolkit, ThoughtForm helped the consultants put their training into action with mock planning exercises.
In these exercises, HMHS consultants learned how to create an approachable environment for health plan partners and helped to mitigate risk during the real planning sessions by testing each facilitation method and making it their own. Consultants played different roles during the mock exercises: facilitators, health plan partners, and third-party observers who made notes about each group’s performance. By playing different roles, HMHS consultants gained empathy for each participant’s needs and found ways to support those needs in advance of the real session.
“ThoughtForm’s unique approach to facilitation helped us to optimize planning time with our partners and provide more value. The process of developing our portfolio was collaborative and enjoyable—something our partners appreciated.”
The Impact
With a customized facilitation toolkit and personalized training workshops to equip the team with design-based facilitation best practices, HM Health Solutions and their consultants now have an improved process that:
Creates greater understanding and alignment between HMHS’ consulting organization and health plan partners
Improves consultants’ efficiency and reduces proposal re-work
Supports a consultative planning process that increases investments and partner loyalty
Continues development and reinforces HMHS brand position as a trusted advisor and innovative partner