Since time immemorial, Indigenous Peoples have lived in alignment with and successfully stewarded nature. Although the thousands of years of sustainability, the events of colonization have left many Indigenous Peoples and communities to experience discrimination, anger, despair, and frustration from the social, economic, and environmental position imposed on them by colonizers. However, following the Calder decision in 1973, there was a resurgence, agency and strength brought within Indigenous groups in Canada. Still, the combined impacts of industrialization, urbanization, climate change, and globalization have caused unprecedented challenges to Indigenous Peoples today. These challenges are extraordinarily frustrating as they create organizational challenges around leadership and operations. Leadership challenges have been seen to cause a lack of transparency and accountability in governance and limited direction around strategic planning and performance monitoring. Operationally, management processes like human resources and communications and capacity building through innovation and training have additionally been difficult to fulfill.

Addressing these challenges involves using a stepped approach, as depicted below in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Stepped Approach to Operational Excellence

Case Study

The Problem

One Indigenous nation resonated with these challenges and decided to put this stepped approach to the test. As an Indigenous government based in the interior of rural BC, colonization and climate change were two key problems limiting this nation. First, due to colonization in the late 1800s, the nation was allocated 283 hectares of poor-quality reserves land. The land had low-quality topsoil, was rocky, and lacked access to flat ground, making cultivation for the community impossible. Lands continued to be taken away for the use of public transportation like railways and highways. The limited land and actual use of available land stagnated jobs, capacity, and other economic opportunities within the nation. Climate change posed additional hurdles for this nation as flooding, wildfires, a depleting animal population, and traditional food sources have put the nation in a fight-or-flight mode. A lack of good governance practice and planning further exacerbated these issues and their ability to cope with the impending problems.

The Solution

To begin addressing the disproportionate impacts of colonization and climate change, a 5-year strategy was pursued. The following information will discuss the steps to achieve operational excellence by going over how it was done and the lessons learned. Take our steps and lessons learned to apply to and inform your organization’s operations.

Step 1: Community Engagement

The first step set a goal to “become aware of the problems faced by the community and identify where it was coming from”, which led directly to community engagement. Community engagement explored authority, decision-making, and accountability, which initiated the creation of the community’s constitution and functional organizational setup. Establishing the community’s constitution provided the opportunity to unite community members who wanted a say in governance and begin organizing governance practices. However, issues still involve being able to engage the entire community and working with low capacity to achieve the high goals and standards sought by the community.

Organizational setup successfully separated politics from business, decision-making from implementation, and profit from non-profit activities, and created a system of accountability and clear communication. Although, these systems inherently introduced a new concept of hierarchy in a culture of interconnectedness. Additionally, this increased the administration complexity by creating more departments and entities that the community lacked the capacity for.

Step 2: Team Building

Step 2 centred on the goal to “find community champions and recruit partners to create, implement and report on a plan”. This began by looking for specialists and passionate individuals to guide community governance based on a community-built list of desired values. This started with direct discussions with staff and community members, followed by discussions with neighbouring communities and external networks to advise on the ideal team. Through this process, community-based champions and like-minded external partners were identified. For community-based champions, passionate individuals came forward, and various employment opportunities within the community were created. However, skill gaps from the team made the planning and execution of projects challenging, which caused decision-makers to question the community-based champions.

Finding external partners was a great success as it strengthened the local team’s overall skill and capacity gaps and created a more extensive network of support for public relations and finances. Although, partners had a limited understanding of the community life and found values difficult to manage. Further, some partners had their own agenda and were not open-minded to the communities needs, which led to no significant or long-term partnerships.

Step 3: The Game Plan

Step 3 is where the strategic plan’s road map was created (Figure 2). Through engagement with the community, high-level priorities were identified: Governance; Natural and Man-made Infrastructure; Healthcare, Culture, and Personal Well-being; Education and Training; and Employment and Economic Development. Each priority area included objectives, implementation strategies and action plans, timelines, and success measurement criteria. Identifying priority areas was successful by organizing the community’s needs and getting all members and leaders involved in the prioritization process. What was difficult was trying to include some activities into priority areas as it worked against community resiliency objectives. Additionally, gathering input from members living outside the community was difficult and ineffective.

Action plans for community initiatives were successful as they were created using SMART goals that allowed projects to be completed efficiently and with accountability. However, the extensiveness of the list made implementation somewhat overwhelming at times and some members were not onboard with some objective’s timelines.

Figure 2 Strategic Plan Timeline/Road Map

Step 4: Execution

Execution started with a goal to “procure resources in order to execute the game plan”. This stage involved confirming the need for the initiatives through multiple sources to ultimately develop the vision and success measurements. The result was the procurement of financial and non-financial resources to implement the priority areas and then the implementation of the strategic plan and reaching community goals. Procuring resources was successful at attracting good partners and investors and increasing organizational capacity. Although, acquiring 100% external funds was rare, and the number of action items was too much for the community’s financial and otherwise capacity.

The implementation of the plan and achieving goals was effective as the community was able to see the results firsthand, which increased the community’s confidence in leadership and management execution abilities. There were some unforeseeable events like the pandemic, flooding, and wildfires that disrupted the plan and goals. Furthermore, sunset funding and limited own-source revenues restricted the initiative’s growth.

Step 5: Excellence

Excellence was achieved with the foundational goal to “evaluate implementation efforts, troubleshoot, train and build capacity while maintaining community accountability”. Step 5 created a process for continuous feedback with community members, leadership, and staff that was communicated in monthly, bi-monthly, weekly, and bi-annual meeting reports. This process allowed the community to continuously re-evaluate the plan and revise it to enhance the project’s performance. The ongoing evaluation of implementation efforts worked well at keeping the project team engaged, and the performance remained satisfactory. What didn’t work was, in some cases, micromanagement of the project occurred, and too much reporting was required by multiple users.

Troubleshooting, training the team, and increasing community accountability was complimented by direct community feedback that improved the team’s capacity. Further, regular reporting and communication kept everyone on the same page. Although the frequency of the reports limited capacity, the reporting comprehensiveness declined, and team members often limited themselves to only the feedback they received.

As a result, a Community Resilience Plan was created that expanded on the community’s priority areas of Governance, Land & Resources, Health, Culture, Education, Infrastructure, and Economic Development. One of the critical outcomes of this plan was over 50 homes were planned, constructed, and are now being operated by the community. Steps like these that prioritize engagement, capacity building, and long-term planning create the foundations for resilient communities - a characteristic desperately needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change and work through the past and ongoing effects of colonization.

Achieving Operational Excellence: A 5-Stepped Approach

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