Top 10 Global Art and Design School

“Help us engage with our workforce and stakeholders to co-create a change vision and journey to integrate and merge academic schools. Smooth the transition for staff from two schools to one, by bringing together 3 distinct teams with their own goals and objectives.”

Approach

  1. Design a change process that involves staff and graduates from both schools

  2. Co-create a vision of the future school through staff workshops

  3. Gather graduate insights on prospective change through online survey and workshop

  4. Define a shared vision and set of strategic priorities for a new School of Innovation and Technology

  5. Generate collective ownership of the new vision and strategy

  6. Align the senior management team: bring clarity on what the merger will enable and make recommendations on next steps for how the vision can be achieved

Vision and Strategy

The school recognised that without internal buy-in and alignment the merger of the schools would not be as successful as it could be. In an effort to ensure continued collaboration and awareness of changes in structure, roles and objectives the internal teams were actively engaged to arrive at a shared school vision and associated strategic objectives. The result was an aligned strategy the teams could work towards together, which clarified expectations and presented a shared mission all could get behind.

Stakeholder engagement (graduates and alumni)

As an academic institution the school has several external stakeholders, most importantly its students and almuni (the defacto customers). In order to make the strategy ‘customer centric’, research was conducted to surface their needs, pains, gains and jobs to be done. This revealed opportunities and barriers for the school’s strategy to address in order to maintain and grow their student body.

Recommendations

The recommendations in the end included several more aspects than was initially expected. Working with internal teams and their students (users, customers) opened up new doors that would greatly increase the service delivery (e.g. curriculum), relationships and revenue.

Creating strategy with only an internal or external perspective can lead to leaving opportunities on the table. Seeking input and collaboratively creating awareness and input to strategy in order to better an organisation can pay-off while also maintaining motivation and engagement with a workforce that is undergoing a potentially threatening shift.

Keywords: merger, change management, strategy, stakeholder management

Pick your Change Journey

When embarking on a change journey I have drawn on several resources, but none are as prevalent as Kotter’s 8 Steps Change Model. At first glance the model suggests Change is linear, unsurprisingly it isn’t in reality. As a model it provides a fantastic blueprint to build a change journey that aligns with your organisation. I have designed several change journeys and more often than not the steps overlap, they change position or the start might be at step 4. Regardless of your organisation, change is about people. Even if you ‘merely’ intend to introduce a new work management system, you will still need to overcome the human reaction of your workforce (e.g. possible resistance, fear, diminishing motivation). Change is an emotional journey, ignore it at your own peril.

Also consider what type of change you are undergoing. Is your organisation going through a shift due to technological advancements that change the way your business delivers its services? Is the economic climate changing, do you have an influx of new people, or do you have to make redundancies? These factors will influence your decision on what change journey you might need embark on for your organisation. Lastly, be prepared that a plan might and must change if needed.

Strategy Co-Creation & Stakeholder engagement done right

Of course persuasive storytelling and communication is key to managing stakeholders effectively. However, a dimension that is sometimes overlooked is building trust. That does not happen in the board room, or with a well crafted report sent by email. When I engage with stakeholders I take their point of view, ask questions about their agenda, their goals, their fears and hopes. Stakeholders are human after all. Building trust on the outskirts of a project can greatly increase your influence and impact.

A word on co-creation: set your boundaries when involving people in co-creation. You want to avoid ‘design by committee’. Meaning, pick the areas where you genuinely want people’s input and contribution, clearly communicate how the decision-making process works and clarify if there are areas where decision-makers are going to call shots that might not please everyone. What is good for the organisation isn’t always what people want, that’s the reality of leaders.

If you want to find out more about ‘design by committee’, check out the story of the Scottish Parliament Building.

Is your organisation undergoing change? Want to be an effective change leader and bring people along the journey?

Get in touch to get your Change Journey Toolkit and make change happen.

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