The Client
An IT department in the healthcare services industry was in need of organizational change in order to expand their services. Torrey Owens, Strategic Development Associates (SDA), was the lead organizational change consultant to the CIO and his leadership team. The CIO needed someone responsible to focus solely on the organizational change initiatives because he and his leadership team were busy running day-to-day operations. He knew he needed an experienced, known partner to help him lead the change efforts, which is why he called on Strategic Development Associates for help.
The Challenge
The IT department was faced with business requests to maintain old systems while they were strategically preparing to migrate many solutions toward enterprise-wide applications. However, moving toward enterprise-wide applications was going to require change on multiple levels involving the people, process and technology.
It was ultimately identified that all managers ran their departments to serve their customers, and in order to support the enterprise IT solutions to come they would need to collaborate to support an integrated IT department strategy that was aligned to the overarching business strategy. Furthermore, due to a reduced budget, there was limited support for internal HR / Organization Development Business Partners, which also impacted hiring the strategic IT talent needed to support the CIO.
The Goal
The CIO was aware there were key job positions and roles that were necessary to architect the new IT plan. After further analysis, SDA realized all elements in the organization’s change/design would need attention at some level, which included organizational structure, internal process, rewards/motivators of leaders/teams, and evaluating and aligning the new skills and talents needed for the upcoming changes. The CIO fully understood the complexity and length of time this change was going to take time.
The Solution
SDA defined the new job roles that were critical for transitioning projects. This was done by creating job descriptions with competencies along with structured interview guides to assist leaders in order to ensure they were hiring based on the new requirements. SDA also helped facilitated sub-team change meetings comprised of leadership and employees as a platform to engage in discussion about new functions, skills, and roles needed. This served as an integral method for communicate and educating the staff about the vision and steps involved before, during and after for change.
A work task analysis was completed to determine
Having Torrey Owens as an objective, trusted advisor allowed the company’s CIO the time to plan and reflect on “how” to make everything happen on a personal and leadership team level. Torrey had a great rapport and track record with the CIO from their previous work together. She created the change plans and facilitated roles & responsibility discussions to analyze current state vs. future state needs, while also coaching the leaders on managing change, advising on development opportunities, training leadership teams on influencing their groups through change, conducting a process and roles analysis, and ultimately crafting a change plan in partnership with the CIO and his leadership team.
The Results
Over the course of 18 months, Strategic Development Associates provided the CIO and leadership team with the correct processes and tools for planning and leading organization change.
Strategic Development Associates successfully implemented the following solutions:
- Acted as their project manager to ensure all change projects were completed.
- Coached and mentored leaders to have self-awareness regarding how they were managing the change along with how to best influence team members throughout the change.
- Partnered with their internal HR department to streamline job descriptions. Through this process, SDA analyzed roles and responsibilities to gain consistency and clarity with roles and responsibilities to support the new environment.
Create key managerial resources to support the following employee engagement:
- Career paths in the new structure;
- Architecture to roles and responsibilities aligned with IT processes;
- On-boarding guides to all new employees and contractors to ensure the messaging was clear about the new culture and vision for change;
- Interviewing Guides for key positions.
