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MAG helped the organization build a high-functioning leadership team, refine and implement its strategic plan, and create a diversity plan. On the basis of this work:
- BRI was awarded $3M in new grants
- BRI regained its place at the forefront of its field
BACKGROUND
BRI initially came to MAG seeking a wide range of organization strengthening interventions, including senior team building and leadership development, culture change to support implementation of their existing strategic plan, and a “cultural diversity” effort to help the organization’s leadership create and manage a more inclusive organization.
ANALYSIS
Our internal assessment interviews revealed why BRI management requested these particular interventions: Staff, especially in BRI’s largest program department, reported very low morale, feelings of disrespect by management, inadequate supervision and feedback, and high levels of interpersonal and interdepartmental conflict, and poor interdepartmental coordination. The second largest program department reported much higher levels of staff satisfaction but was similarly concerned with interdepartmental conflict and lack of alignment among senior managers.
MAG identified two key issues at the heart of the reported difficulties. First, the strategic plan lacked any specific outcome goals or implementation plans, and few if any employees, especially in the largest department, felt ownership of the plan or used it to guide their work. Second, the management team had no clear ideas about its organizational or programmatic priorities, contained several members with serious deficits in management and leadership capacity, and the balance of the CEO’s internal and external roles were unclear to everyone, including the CEO.
CATALYZING CHANGE
To address the leadership problems, MAG worked with the senior management team as a group and coached individual managers to: a) clarify collective and individual roles; b) improve communication and coordination; c) identify organization-wide priorities on which they would focus their energies; d) attend more to the human impact of transitions, managerial processes, and decisions; and, e) create more transparency and mutuality in organizational communications. The team development work and coaching made it apparent that three of the senior managers were unwilling or unable to perform at needed levels, and they were asked to leave BRI. MAG also designed and facilitated several all-staff workshops to increase staff skill in managing conflict and dealing with the significant profession-based style differences among various staff and departments.
These initial interventions were necessary to stabilize the situation, but inadequate on their own to address the huge range of organizational problems and staff complaints surfaced in the assessment. MAG firmly believed that BRI would only get back on track by creating clear and broadly shared outcome goals and strategies. To achieve this, MAG worked with a joint Board-staff planning group to design a strategic planning process with the following major elements:
- Strategic assessment interviews with staff, Board, funders, collaborating organizations (past, present, and potential), and content experts. The interviews provided Board, staff, and MAG with the data necessary to devise innovative, fundable, and much needed goals and strategies.
- Significant Board and external expert involvement, especially early on, as a way of breaking the staff out of its traditional but sometimes outdated ways of thinking.
- Interdisciplinary working groups, to develop innovative yet realistic ways to pursue each of BRI’s 10-15 year outcome goals. The working groups not only accomplished their tasks brilliantly, but the groups served to develop the strategic thinking and planning abilities of numerous staff members, enabled several staff members to emerge as surprisingly powerful organizational leaders, broke down many of the interdepartmental barriers, and resulted in several powerful, interdepartmental goals and strategies.
- Complete integration of “diversity” with the strategic planning process. Instead of being treated as a stand-alone activity, diversity concerns were made part-and-parcel of all stages of the strategic planning process, including:
- Thorough integration of diversity issues into the qualitative and quantitative tools used in the strategy assessment.
- Creation of strategy working group focused on diversity, whose membership overlapped with that of all of the other working groups. This ensured that every long-term goal was considered through a “diversity lens.”
- Development of a staff-generated vision of inclusiveness and diversity that generated enormous excitement and opened people’s minds to the importance of partnering across many kinds of difference.
- Integration of a detailed diversity plan, with timed steps and measures of success, into the overall BRI strategic plan.
- Commitment of a highly regarded VP-level
staff member to ensure continued commitment of
resources and
follow-through.
RESULTS
The client’s
evaluation of MAG’s strategy work with BRI
speaks to the work’s impact on the
organization:
“The outcomes-based strategic plan met
the following ambitious criteria:
- Advanced the strategic shifts and organizational and programmatic integration required to meet the challenges created by the current external landscape.
- Engaged and excited the Board of Directors
- Engaged maximum participation by staff—with a resulting sense of ownership of the final product.
- Built the planning capacity of the management and senior leadership team—and identified future staff leaders
- Integrated a comprehensive Diversity Plan
- Engaged significant participation by experts outside BRI’s “circle.”
The
strategy process modeled a culture built around
team building, learning, and openness to the
outside world—a tall order! BRI’s
organizational culture is, to a very important
extent, defined by a “debate-style” and extreme
caution. As a result, we often lose the
benefits of brainstorming and risk-taking in
putting forth new ideas. [MAG’s
consultant] was utterly disciplined in guiding
us through the dialogue and risk-taking needed
to move BRI forward—while remaining patient,
flexible, and resourceful in dealing with the
inevitable reactions and hurdles we
faced. Beyond that—and equally
important—she was able to combine this level of
standard-setting with an extremely supportive
and collaborative relationship—not only with me
but with the entire
staff.”
Beyond the walls of BRI,
the innovative strategy—which brings
significantly new thinking to bear on old and
intractable problems—has generated enough
excitement that the organization was able to
raise over three million dollars in three
months to fund major portions of the new
work. On the strength of its new
direction and energy, BRI also successfully
recruited a world-renowned expert to head up
its largest program department—putting BRI on
track to regain its place as an effective,
cutting-edge advocate for basic rights.