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- Committed Leadership
Committed Leadership
Purpose
To ensure addressing smoking becomes a top priority within the organisation.
Why this step is important
To change the way your organisation addresses smoking, you need everyone on board- from executive to individual carers.
Completion time
3+ months
Who to involve
- Executives
- Managers
- Supervisors
- Staff
- Carers
Steps to implement
The support of senior staff (such as the CEO, executives and senior managers) is critical to your project’s success. You need agreement and commitment from all levels in order to change the systems and processes required to properly address smoking.
If you are working with Cancer Council NSW, we are with you at every step. A representative will come to the meeting to discuss the project and help get your leadership team on-board.
A project leader is necessary to drive and coordinate your Tackling Tobacco project. Your project leader could be a support worker, a team leader or a senior staff member.
Your project leader should be:
- Passionate about the need to address smoking
- Organised, thorough and a good communicator
- Well known to staff and able to build good rapport
- Able to empathise and understand, as well as lead and support
- Resilient and a determined problem solver
- Committed to harm-reduction.
Project leader tasks:
- Coordinate and lead the project
- Organise regular project steering group meetings
- Be the primary contact between the proect steering group and other staff
- Organise and participate in training for staff to provide smoking care
- Facilitate policy and practice changes within the organisation.
The project steering group supports the project leader by discussing, planning and helping to drive changes. Members of this group are the voices of the difference people within your organisation.
To be truly effective, the group should consist of up to eight members from a wide range of roles and levels, from managers and staff to clients and carers.
You need to know where you are before you can move forward. That’s where an audit come in.
An audit is a set of questions to explore how your organisation currently addresses smoking. Your project leader should conduct the audit to identify opportunities for policy, systems and practice changes, and then create a project plan with clear actions, milestones and timelines.
If you are working with Cancer Council NSW, we will help you develop your project plan and agree on responsibilities between the two organisations. The project plan will form the basis of a Project Agreement between your organisation and Cancer Council.
Clear communication should start at the beginning and continue long after the project has finished. Good communication helps maintain and sustain changes, as well as justify them.
If you communicate throughout and discuss the importance, the costs and the benefits of the project you will be ready to present a solid and well argued case for every change along the way.