Rebuilding CALHN's Strategy and Digital Function, From the Ground Up

CALHN, South Australia: Strategy & Digital Directorate, Interim Leadership and the Digital First Factory

The Client’s Position

CALHN's digital maturity, governance and decision-making were fragmented. Investment decisions and new ideas weren't being assessed consistently, and there was no established mechanism to test, evaluate and scale innovation properly. The organisation needed more than another strategy document. It needed a functioning Strategy & Digital Directorate that could actually run day to day, and the capability to sustain that function long after any external support had gone.

What Tektology Contributed

We were engaged to support the establishment and rapid mobilisation of a newly created Strategy & Digital Directorate. Rather than advising from the outside, we stepped into the interim Executive Director, Strategy & Digital role and supported the running of the function during its establishment: shaping the Directorate's strategy and operating model, building its governance, developing the analytical and decision-support capability it needed to inform the Board and Executive, managing staff, and planning and prioritising investment across the organisation. Throughout, we acted as a critical friend to the CEO and Board, and worked to upskill CALHN's own people so the Directorate could still be fully functional after our engagement ended.

Within that broader remit, we designed and built CALHN's Digital First Factory, a physical space and co-design methodology that let clinical and operational staff shape and test their own solutions directly, rather than have ideas handed down from outside. The Factory sat inside a much larger redesign of how CALHN approached strategy, digital and innovation together, one visible piece of a wider shift in how the organisation made and governed its decisions.

As the Directorate matured, we supported CALHN in sourcing and onboarding a permanent incumbent to take on the role we'd been running on an interim basis, and worked to transfer the knowledge, relationships and ways of working we'd built so the transition didn't lose momentum.

Outcome

CALHN now has an established Strategy & Digital Directorate and operating model, with improved Executive and Board oversight of its digital capabilities through core KPIs, dashboards and a ‘war room’ concept that lets key executives make real-time decisions based on data. The Digital First Factory continues to run ideas and early-stage projects through its methodology, and the capability and knowledge to lead and develop all of this now sits with CALHN's own team.