Organizational Health Optimization: Program Management
After completing a major merger combining three companies, the Training department embarked on a transformational organizational alignment. The Program Management function had been organized as a centralized team supporting all training design programs and projects, however, as part of the merger the number of Program Managers in the organization doubled and the scope of support had increased significantly. This provided the opportunity to de-centralize Program Management support and dedicate resources to each Instructional Design Team. Fifty percent of the Program Managers were new to this line of business and with the re-organized teams that meant half of the Program Managers had no working knowledge of the new organization they were supporting and the rest were only partially familiar with existing processes and procedures.
The objectives of this Capstone project are to:
1. Design and Implement a Change Management Strategy
Establishing a Change Management effort and engaging the Leadership team were critical first steps to ensure that the leaders supporting the Program Managers were aligned on the opportunity, purpose and the approach.
Using the Open Theory Approach I blended the Organizational Health Model and the Experience Change Model to develop the Change Management Strategy for this work.
Objectives:
Phase 1: Define the opportunity and enlist the support of Leadership.
Phase 1: Design Change Management process and align the Leadership team on the purpose.
Phase 2: Assess the Organizational Structure to determine how best to launch and support a decentralized PM support model.
Phase 2: Assess newly updated processes to identify and correct procedural gaps and establish a process management life-cycle support model.
2. Guide Program Managers through Change
Program Managers are the backbone of the training organization and keep the many projects and programs that the design teams own on schedule, on budget and within allocated resources and budgets. The outcome of this project will result in process alignment across Directors, Program Managers and the design teams they support enabling Program Managers to effectively and efficiently run design projects and manage programs. Program Managers will also develop leadership skills that will enable them to support their teams effectively.
Objectives:
Phase 3: Develop an onboarding strategy and program that will allow for each Program Manager to learn about the new organization, the processes they support, and provide networking opportunities that result in a Program Management Community of Practice.
Phase 4: Assess Program Manager knowledge and develop continuing education paths to support on-going skills and competency development opportunities for Program Managers.
