Are you facing the challenge of organizing and planning a first workshop session to kick-off your organizational restructuring work? The key to acing that crucial first session is most often proper preparation, which can involve some tricky choices. The following guide will help you navigate the planning process effectively.
Define a high-level project plan for your organization design project
First of all, you have to define what success will look like for the overall effort. What great things will happen when this project is run successfully? How will it deliver the strategy? How will people be happier and more productive when this new organization comes into being?
Once you have powerful answers to the questions above, define how you will get there. Our free customization tool included in the Organizational Structure Kit can help you with this:
Selecting the right people to involve
Once you’ve defined your game plan, you’ll need to consider who to involve in the project, and thus who to involve in the first kick-off workshop. Lead questions regarding the selection of adequate stakeholders and participants could be:
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Who is directly affected by the organizational change?
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Who are important stakeholders for the entity to be designed (e.g., because they receive a service from that entity, or they will have another relevant interface)?
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Will this person play a role in deciding on the new structure?
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Who is knowledgeable regarding the function of the entity?
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Who is well-connected, a well-regarded change agent or opinion leader within the organization?
An important factor to point out is that “involved” does not mean that someone necessarily must take part in every workshop every time. It could also mean that their input prior to the workshop is relevant or that outputs need to be aligned with them.
Prepare your kick-off workshop and define your agenda
As a first step, we foresee a half-day workshop, but it can be less or more depending on your circumstances and scope. After going over the goals of the workshop, it should entail an introduction to the new organizational structure framework and cover measures to establish a link to the strategy and principles for your organizational design work, as well as its scope.
In the Management Kit Process Guide on how to run your organizational design project, you’ll find exemplary meeting and workshop agendas, supporting each step of the process and referencing the tools in the Organizational Structure Kit.