Sorted it….!

Had some really useful help from others and, probably quite slowly, realised that I can get around my issue.

I don’t need to have put a framework to the test in order to complete a cycle of enquiry. By taking a much smaller approach to ‘cycles’ I can take one of my risks, identify a theory that would help me mitigate it, plan how to apply that theory in my Ebi context and cite use of that theory for other situations to support my plan – that should just about cover it I think.

So my assignment may end up covering:

– stakeholder identification, mapping and management.
– surfacing a theory to manage resistance and presenting a plan of how to apply it in context.

Thanks so much to everyone has has helped with ideas – if you hadn’t guessed already it’s been driving me mad.

Don’t let this stop anyone still throwing some thoughts in though – still plenty of time before the assignment is due and besides I’ve for to start planning how to write it up yet!

*Cycle 5 – Résistance is futile! (Unit 5 – marketing)

So the focus now is on the resistant stakeholder and how to overcome this force.

Huge links here to management theory and leadership styles, alongside marketing and generally getting to know your ‘customer’s behaviours, needs and motivations’.

My thinking in being able to understand this stakeholder better is that I may be able to tap into shared values and the like in order to gain some cooperation. With the ultimate aim of making for a successful change.

One key framework here has been Morgan and Hunt’s Relationship Commitment and trust model. Whereby identifying relationship benefits, termination costs, shared values, increasing comms and decreasing opportunistic behaviour will lead to better trust and commitment to the team. Success in this area would be recognised by cooperation, acquiescence,…….

Theories/Frameworks used:

– Morgan and Hunt’s trust model

And on to risk management…..

A change in the Ebi focus…….!

Quick update on the Cycles of inquiry so far….

Why is it a problem? – who’s involved? – where’s the power? – how will I influence those who do have the power? – where is the resistance? – what might a new process look like?…….

It’s important to say at this stage that the customer has now taken all responsibility for addressing the inaccurate info in the current process and taken action to redesign the tool (spreadsheet) that tracks progress so that it contains all the required information for each stakeholder – all done collaboratively of course – a great breakthrough.

It’s for this reason that here my Ebi took on a different form and became an initiative to reduce the resisting forces to the change.

Cycle 4 (Investigating the process further – Unit 5)

This cycle of enquiry was based around Operations. I spent time to map out the current process alongside a more streamlined version.

Doing this highlighted the complexity of the current process and identified areas where the ‘fat’ (mainly duplication) could be trimmed and scope for more detail to be added for internal customers.

The transformation process was also of use here. It helped to contextualise the resources we had at hand to produce the required outputs in our organisation. It also highlighted the unwanted outputs – such as wasted time and effort – that linked to my Ebi.

The process map combined with the CATWOE approach really helped to create a wider view and the larger implications of our inefficient practices.

Theries/Frameworks used:

– process mapping
– transformation process
– CATWOE/Process map

But what of the resistant stakeholder?…….

*Cycle 2….. (Stakeholder Management – Unit 1)

In gaining evidence to support the need for action on the issue, I was also able to identify that all stakeholders agreed with my suspician but more interestingly that all – bar one – were happy to support a change.

Knowing this, and confirming exactly who the stakeholders were allowed me to enter a cycle of enquiry based around stakeholder mapping and management practices.

These tools helped me to identify alliances, where the power was and therefore strategies to bring a resistant stakeholder onside. I found these tools really, really useful as I was quickly able to identify a way to overcome the resistant stakeholder issue in order to continue with my plan.

Theories/Frameworks used:

– stakeholder mapping: interest vs power matrix/ TDA for Schools disposition mapping (Johnson/price)
– Scholes’ nine stakeholder maps (the dogged opponent)

Cycle 1…… Gaining Evidence (Productive Enquiry)

My first cycle of enquiry was based around gaining evidence that the issue actually existed. This involved a small bit of creative problem solving (a really simple mind map) that highlighted some evidence that I already had; in the form of tasking sheets that lacked info, emails highlighting that things weren’t quite right with particular updates, departmental spreadsheets that were produced and used in isolation and our own departmental caseload spreadsheet (also wrongly used in isolation) that highlighted a bottleneck in the process at the resourcing end.

What I still needed to gain was evidence from discussions about the issue specifically – and I needed to target all key stakeholders/users of the process.

I won’t go into detail about the opinions given but essentially the customer was unaware that they were being given duff info about completion date, the design staff were fed up with constantly changing priorities in an already busy department, and delivery staff took the ‘why should we bother highlighting issues when nothing ever changes’ approach.

The positive thing was that most department heads agreed that something should be done.

Theories/Frameworks used:

– CPS
– Productive inquiry (varied types of evidence for triangulation)

To be honest no particular theory/framework was used at this stage.

To be continued…..

So what did my Ebi start out as…..?

My Ebi began as a project to improve the tracking process for the updates process discuss in the organisational context.

The need to change this process was initially driven due to internal duplication of information across departments and a lack of information required by stakeholders in order to complete their respective stages. For example; in order to update course material you need to know which course it affects, which training objective it applies to and to what level you wish consumers to be able to understand the topic. These elements were missing.

From a customer point of view you would expect the date of completion to reflect the date at which the new content was first delivered – in this case that date only reflected the date that the design stage had been completed, with clear implications for customer external evaluation in the future.

Looking back I can see a conflict here between Oakland and Tanners organisational change model – where external drivers trigger change. In this case it was an internal driver that triggered a need for change. Perhaps this was due to there already being a process, or even that the customer (external) was unaware of the finer details/processes that fed them information – and therefore were oblivious to the issues.

Either way I felt that something had to be done to improve efficiency, effectiveness and customer/consumer satisfaction.

Organisational Context….

I work for a learning organisation where we are responsible to a training requirements authority (TRA), the external customer, for the design, delivery and quality assurance of information delivered to students (the consumers).

In order to manage updates, or inclusion of new material, to training content a cross-organisational process exists. The importance of this process is that it ultimately lets the customer know that updates have been completed but also tracks progress and passes on information required to each stage – customer to design, design to resourcing, resourcing to deliverers, delivery to design again(for quality assurance) and design back to customer. Ultimately this enables the customer to be confident that their request for training meets a need and also that they know who (base on actual delivery date) they need to target for feedback on any changes to training content.

Evidence Based Initiative (EBI)

Just created a new category dedicated to my Ebi. Hopefully it will help me develop a good end of year assignment prior to the final exams!