Phase 2: Create Clarity

Create Clarity of Purpose

Once the core change team aligned themselves as a cohesive team, they began designing the vision and strategy for the change initiative that would guide them in designing the Program Managers Onboarding experience. To prepare them for this work, the Change Champion led them through an exercise based on Lencioni’s 6 Critical Question to create clarity and further align themselves on the purpose of their work.

This work required some guidance from the steering committee as they approached topics that required alignment with larger organizational goals as well as support from Human Resources as they evaluated roles and responsibilities as part of answering questions 2, 3 and 6. The core change team recognized that this work would require input from team members across the organization and conducted feedback surveys and hosted 1:1 interviews to capture data. This allowed the team to assess the current and new working structure of the Program Managers and determine how best to launch this change initiative in the decentralized Program Manager support model.

Envisage

Develop a Vision

The core change team developed the vision for their initiative and used it to align their team and in the future align the Program Managers who would be part of the Onboarding Program. “A vision is a description of a desired end state. It is a foundation for new strategies and initiatives. It will support your change initiative and help you defend new strategies and tactics. It will help people adjust to change because it provides guidance and coherence in turbulent times.” (ExperiencePoint, 2019) The change vision should “convey three key messages: (a) the mission or purpose, (b) the strategy for achieving the mission, and (c) the elements of the organizational culture that seemed necessary to achieving the mission and supporting the strategy.” (Cawsey, 123). This will ensure that the vision is defined in a way that the Training Operations team can connect with and support the alignment and restructuring needed to set the team up for success.

Define the Strategy

With a vision that provides a sense of direction, the core change developed their strategy.  The strategy serves as a roadmap that defines how they will accomplish the change initiative by mapping out the tasks, roles responsible and timeline.  To accomplish this work a strategy map was developed to organize tasks and guide the communication process. This is not a static document and should be reviewed and updated as tasks are completed, new information is presented, and as internal and external factors alter the progress or direction of the team. “When it is obvious that goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” (Confucius as quoted in Cawsey, 297)