Episode Transcript
Elizabeth McIsaac: For today’s session, we’re focusing on organizational change. Creating meaningful, lasting change in an organization is no small feat. It’s a challenge many of us face, and it’s something that Claire Forster knows very well. Claire is a non-profit consultant who specializes in strategy, governance and human resources for small to medium-sized organizations. She’s the founder of Hexagon Consulting and a senior associate with There Consulting, a Black-owned, woman-led firm dedicated to values-driven work.
With years of experience as a VP of human resources for a global financial services company, Claire has led major initiatives like mergers, organizational redesigns, and culture transformation, so she knows this territory very well. Today, Claire will share with us practical strategies for making meaningful and sustainable change in an organization. We will learn about the importance of how to integrate new programs, communicating clearly with the team, and managing the impact on culture in a way that leads to change that lasts. Claire, thank you for joining us.
Claire Forster: You’re welcome. It’s good to be here, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s great to have you here because this is an issue that all of us, whether we like it or not (and as you and I have talked about, sometimes change is simply hoisted upon you), so we’re dealing with it. And what’s great is that you have ideas about how to come at this in a systematic and meaningful way.
Claire Forster: Thanks, Elizabeth. I think we’re all experts at being on the receiving end of change today, either at the society level or at the individual level. I mean, when you think about the last few years or five years or so, all of the things we faced – global crises such as mass migration, Black Lives Matter, a pandemic, a housing crisis, and now apparently a global trade crisis – and who knows what our friend next door will bring on us at any given day. Then of course, just as individuals, we go through change in our lives by natural course – a new member of the family, moving cities, changing jobs, then you show up at work and you’ve got change initiatives. We’ve seen in the last two years a real restructuring of the way we work. We’re not quite sure where it’s going to land yet, but a lot of workforces are hybrid. Some are going back to going to the office and we’ve only just nibbled at the edges of AI. Then you layer on top of that – you show up at work and your board chair or your CEO says, “Yay, we’ve got some new funding, but it’s going to involve a major change.” That’s our lives right now. Seriously, I would actually caution folks – anybody who’s entering into a planned change – to be really, really gentle. People are really becoming overwhelmed and stress levels really are at an all-time high. So be very thoughtful about your change and hopefully some of the ideas I’m going to share today will help with that fact as well. You’re going to hear me talk about communication a lot, which should be no surprise.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Terrific. How do we get started?
Claire Forster: I could start with some definitions because I think people have different connotations of change. I’m going to share my definition so that when I mention them today, people understand what I’m referring to. You’ll hear me reference organizational design, and that, in its simplest form, is what we all know to be the organization chart. Organizational design is basically how we structure the roles and responsibilities to achieve our strategy. That’s your job descriptions, your reporting relationships, all of those kinds of things, which really affect the way we work. That tends to be a one-off process that we do from time to time. Organizational development is an ongoing process – all of those activities and actions that we take to achieve our organization’s goal – things like employee engagement surveys, improving technology, process improvement, and cultural change. Planned organizational development supports organizational change.
Lastly, you mentioned it in your opening and it’s a very popular topic – organizational culture, which I refer to as the organization’s personality. What are those shared values and beliefs that belong to the organization that we’re striving for? Sometimes we state that’s our culture, but that’s not always the way it actually really is.
I did a little exercise – probably what everybody does nowadays – I plugged in “five good ideas for organizational change” into ChatGPT.
I wanted to make sure I didn’t say exactly what ChatGPT was saying, but just to see if there’d been any significant shifts in change principles. It really hasn’t changed. If you go after this session today and look it up, you’ll be able to see the threads of what I’m sharing today. But what I’m hoping to do is to make it more practical so that you can take these real, live examples and take those back into your workplace if you’re lucky enough to be going through a big change.
Elizabeth McIsaac: You’re not going to get this if you do ChatGPT, just to be clear.
Claire Forster: No, I promise you I haven’t repeated! What I’m going to do today, because there are so many different concepts of change out there or different kinds of change, I’m going to focus on using an example of a change in organizational design – structure. Let’s just say that you’ve put in a bid to the government for funding, and wow! You’ve got a million bucks to start a new program. To make this super positive, I’m being really optimistic today and talking about a nice big chunk of money. Now, obviously when you were putting together your proposal for the funding, you have some idea of the change you want to make. You know which product or service, or which change you’re hoping to bring in, to make your organization better, but you don’t necessarily know how you’re going to do it.
As you all know, any kind of change is going to cause feathers to ruffle. It’s going to disrupt the workplace. I tend to think that we get a little bit more excited in the not-for-profit sector because we’re so passionate about what we do that we can have a bit more of a sense of ownership and advocacy – and that can actually make change a little bit more difficult if you’re almost too passionate. Just before I get to idea number one, keep in mind that organizational design is intentional change and it’s usually a positive one, and the end result is to align your employee motivations and structure with the interests of your organization. A goal that I always have is to make the change as simple and as easy to understand as possible. With that, if you’re ready, Elizabeth, I’ll jump straight into idea number one.
Elizabeth McIsaac: All ready.
Claire Forster: All right, so idea number one is to start with the end in mind. What this doesn’t mean is having a preconceived idea of what the organization is going to look like. As CEOs, as board chairs, as specialists, you know you can’t help it – you’re going to have an idea of the design you have in mind. I will caution you not to take that and work backward. That’s human nature, but it perpetuates the status quo and it’s not equity-based, it’s not inclusive and all those good things.
Keeping the end in mind, what you want to do is think about: at the end of this process, how will you know you’ve got it right? How will you know you’ve made the right decisions? Rather than thinking about what this new organization, or department, or function, will look like, think about what it is you want to accomplish.
The examples I have in mind are alignment of – this is the critical one – your organizational structure must always be aligned with your strategy. Must it facilitate quick decision-making? Some organizations, you need to make your decisions lickety-split, so that may have influenced your number of layers of authority (i.e., the depth of the organization). The organization must be simple and easy to understand. In smaller organizations, say with one or two functions, that might be an outcome that you want. If your funding is variable, let’s put it that way, like for most of us it is, it’s really important that your organization is scalable – so you need a flexible organization structure that you could scale down and scale up. Most of us will want our organizational design to be sustainable. The mistake that some people make here is when they’re thinking about new reporting relationships, they think of: who’s my star employee? Who’s my number one? And then build an organization structure around that. That’s really risky because no matter what bells and whistles you give to that person to make them stay with you, life happens. Their spouse could get a new job in another province… the odds are, you’re going to lose that employee. Don’t put anything fixed in there that you can’t change easily. If you set yourself those kinds of objectives (and there are literally thousands of them that you could come to), you then have something at the end that you can measure against, that you can test your organization.
I’d suggest you have some kind of a project steering committee, that you have possibly even a half-day to a day session on figuring out, on brainstorming, what those measurables will be at the end. It gets you buy-in right from the start and gets you blue-skying and into that kind of thinking.
That’s idea number one: Make sure you know what you’re heading towards – not the structure but what the structure must achieve.
Alrighty. Idea number two. I have no doubt that everybody in the room knows that communication is critical to every type of change in the workplace. If there’s one thing you cannot do, it’s over-communicate. What’s the first thing that happens when your department head, CEO, board chair, whoever gets in front of you and says, “So we’re going into a change…” Whatever it is. We’re bringing in a new CEO, we’re merging, we’re… whatever it is. You’re going to panic. You’re going to gossip. You’re going to speculate. Back in my day, when we were all in the office, that water cooler – if change was announced – was as busy as the day after American Idol or the Blue Jays were winning the World Series.
Today, with texting and all kinds of communication channels, it’s gone to the nth degree and it is absolutely amazing what gymnastics our brains can do when we’re speculating the future. Particularly when it comes to our work, because for many of us, our work is our identity. (Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, that’s another topic.)
Idea number two is: It’s equally important to communicate what the change is not, versus what it is. This really comes down to fear, trying to address that fear upfront. If it’s not a downsizing operation, if no one’s going to lose their jobs or lose money or lose status – say it, say it, say it again and again and again. Say it in all kinds of different ways that you can possibly say it to communicate what it isn’t.
If your mission’s not changing, say it. If your culture’s not changing, you’re going to keep the same values, say that. If you do anticipate job losses – and this is somewhat controversial and will depend on whether you have a union and those kind of things – but I suggest and recommend being clear, “We do anticipate some job losses in this. We plan on minimizing the job losses. You will be communicated to by X date.” If you have an even more open environment, it’s even good to share if you have a severance formula that you know that you’re going to follow, “This is what the severance package is going to look like.” Share as much as you can about those kind of things. Say what it isn’t.
But of course, you always also need to say what it is, and make the message as straightforward and simple as possible. What prompted the need for the change? Why is the change critical? What’s in it for me? What are the expected benefits? What are some of the downsides? How am I going to be involved in the change? Will I have a role? Why? Why not? Again, communicate as much as possible. You’ve all heard the regular communication thing – such as using multiple communication channels, meetings, written documentation, employee chat sites – whatever you have, use it. There’s obviously a lot more flexibility that we have nowadays in communication channels, so use them all.
I also recommend, from a communication standpoint, sharing the project plan. Stick it up on a wall if you have an in-person office or if you have virtual walls. Put the project plan up there. Circle where we are today so that everybody can come in on any day they want, “Oh, where are we in the project? Oh, this is happening. All the managers are going off to discuss this topic today.” You’ll address as much fear as you can that way. Sometimes people don’t like to share as much as I do, and obviously your culture is an important factor in that, but as much as you can, share it.
And number three: particularly for organization design projects and I think cultural change projects, it’s important to know that the employees and stakeholders have a lot of the answers. Sometimes people, this can be a little bit controversial for some folks, they think, “Oh, what does the actual employee know, really know, about our strategy and our business?” You’ll be very surprised if you can ask the right types of questions, what will come up. It’s really interesting. Don’t kid yourselves that the latest literature or consultants (even though I am one!) have all the latest and greatest answers. Sometimes they don’t work, and sometimes they won’t work for your culture, and sometimes they haven’t been tested over time. This isn’t overly complicated. We make it overly complicated, but it’s really not rocket science.
If you ask the right questions, your employees know where the sore spots are, they know where the frustrations are, and you’ll actually learn a lot in the process. In the not-for-profit sector, obviously you ask a question, what do we need? Money and resources are always the first things. I use a magic wand when I’m asking employees and managers, directors, board people, questions, but I do put some limits on my magic wand. I might ask, “What’s the one thing you could change? But you cannot say, more money or more resources.” I’m just going to rattle off a list of some of the questions I ask right now to draw out what’s really going on in your organization design. And they’re not always positive questions, but sometimes the negative ones are the ones that can bring you the most information.
So just over coffee even, make this informal: what’s the most frustrating thing about your job? What’s the first thing you’d change if you were the executive director or CEO? What slows you down the most in your job? What decisions do you wish could be made easier or clearer? What decisions could you make by yourself that you have to go to your supervisor for? If you had to describe your job to a brand new friend or family member, what would you tell them you do? What would you tell them your organization does? I’ve got to tell you, you get some really interesting answers to that one that can really shift your view of what you think it is you are doing. What cultural value do you most align with? Do you least align with? Which one do you think, as an organization, we have the most improvement to do? Where’s the biggest gap? You get some really, really interesting information from those types of questions, and I’m sure you all have variations that will fit for your particular niche of the industry or operation you’re in.
I get this question all the time – and I’m pretty confident that everybody has one of these employees, which is just, that employee that’s maybe a little bit negative or a little bit toxic – What do I do about Joe or Joan? Realistically, those folks are very difficult to challenge with because they’ve got a mindset and they’re going to stay there. But I’ve always found the best thing to do is involve them somehow.
Even if it’s the person posting the project chart once a week or doing the updates, give them something to do. And if you’re going to ask this person some of those questions, get the person they’re closest to to do it or have them maybe do it more informally over a lunch with a group of friends, give them a handout. Do it that way. Be flexible. You don’t have to ask all of your employees the questions in the same way. Use different tools for different people. Now Joe and Joan are still going to be negative Nellies and you can’t control that, but you can minimize it, again, by just keeping them busy and keeping them involved. Think about who’s doing the asking of the questions.
It often will depend on your culture as to the method you use, whether it’s by survey, whether it’s bringing in a consultant, whether it’s board members, whether it’s the supervisors, team members. It’s going to depend on your culture and you know your organizations the best. I also mentioned your stakeholders. There are some questions that you can ask your stakeholders that will draw this kind of information out too about how you’re doing or how your structure serves them, such as what’s the biggest frustration you face as a client or a stakeholder? It’s a different way of asking, how are we doing? This will force them to actually think, “Hmm, what does really irritate me?” What’s the best thing about working with us? How do you think we’re doing with our mission, our values, those things. Pick your stakeholders carefully.
Culture, organizational culture. Idea four. Organizational change is a real opportunity to reinforce your organizational values or shift them. Actually any type of big project, but quite frankly, most projects are change projects. Anytime you’re going through change, it’s an opportunity. If you are thinking of changing your cultural values, state them right at the start. State the organizational values you want to reinforce or to change. In an organizational design project, an example is: if you want to reinforce collaboration and teamwork, if that’s really critical to your culture, you’re going to consider a flatter organization structure that facilitates teambuilding and making quick decisions.
Consider at this time changing your reward systems to change any kind of culture that you want to achieve. Reward systems are the things that basically closest links someone to change. It’s very motivational, whether, again, we agree with it or not. You sure get people noticing if you’re going to change the structure of your reward systems. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), I still believe they have value and I believe you can build cultural KPIs into performance. Build a cultural KPI into your CEO’s, into your leaders’ performance measurements, and build them into your role profiles. Build your cultural values into your recruiting and your onboarding so that it’s reinforced all the way. Again, it comes back to communication. All of this is all about communication.
The last one, and this is maybe a nightmare idea, but it’s an important one to keep in mind – it’s not over when you think it’s over. And that doesn’t mean because you’ve got a new change project coming up. It’s because you need to continue to check in with your change to make sure it had the desired effect that you were intending. This is where we come back to idea number one, where we had all of those measures or goals that we were trying to achieve or accomplish with this change. You need to continue to gather feedback and assess your desired outcomes. Continue to use your magic wand. Do a specific employee engagement survey, or a mini one, that focuses on some of the change. Continue to use mapping, diagramming, to tell employees how they fit into this new bigger picture.
I like diagrams. If you look at the employee’s mission and mandate and then those maps that you see in really big malls – “You Are Here” – show someone where they are in the organization, how they fit to the bigger picture. That’s all part of this change management. Then the usual things, such as new team building exercises. If there’s a new leader, consider a new leader facilitation exercise. What do you know about me? What do I know about you? That’s something that I experienced early in my career and I’ve continued to advocate for it because I think it’s a great thing to have a structured session on getting to know your new leader and for them to get to know you. Continue to use storytelling and championing successes. And of course, celebrate.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Thank you, Claire. That was just a great tour through the process of how we need to think about it, how to communicate, how to get people behind it and see themselves in it. That’s always so much of the challenge, having people see themselves as part of the process. One of the questions that struck me, and I have a number of questions that people have already sent in, and I invite people in the room right now to submit some questions to the Q&A box, but I want to go back to organizational design change, all of that is sometimes not a discreet project, sometimes it’s just our ongoing reality, sort of an evolutionary type thing. Is it a good idea to have a more ongoing check-in with staff on some of these things, even to use as part of the annual performance review? How are you doing? What’s working well? So that it’s less of a this-is-a-moment-in-time-to-get-it-all-down, but rather continually listening to where people are at. Is that a good practice to build into the HR practice of the organization and not just wait for a discreet organizational change moment?
Claire Forster: Absolutely. I think a good leader will already know the answers to these questions, but there’s turnover, and as we’ve said, environmental change happens so quickly. It really is important to have more touch-based conversations with employees. I mean, we’re seeing the trend of formal, once a year or once every six months performance management process change, the actual appraisal system is going out the window a little bit. So these kind of conversations become even more important on an ongoing basis. Obviously you’re not going to go through a long list of questions every time you sit down with your employee, but they’re important to build into ongoing conversations so you have your finger on the pulse.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Absolutely. Along the lines of, is there a discreet organizational change activity or is it ongoing, is it a good course of action to implement organizational change, such as a new structure, if it’s not in tandem with a strategic plan? Do those pieces have to actually be happening at the same time or is there a key relationship between the two as you go into this?
Claire Forster: Yeah, well the two, obviously any kind of change you’re doing must link to your strategic direction. Does it have to happen at the same time as you’re developing your strategic plan? Hopefully not. That would be too much at once, but absolutely. Usually a change in your strategic plan could trigger, obviously, a change in your organizational operations and direction and may need an organizational design change or any other kind of change. So absolutely, that’s really where you start how is this change going to align with my strategy and how do the two relate to each other and impact each other? It’s always a good place to start. When you’re looking at those measurement values I mentioned in step one, they are always related to the strategy and how we achieve that strategy.
Elizabeth McIsaac: You, I think wisely, put some constraints or limitations on your magic wand. We’re not going to talk about money and we’re not going to talk about time and resources and so forth. But the reality is, I would say, pretty much every organization on the line in the room right now has those constraints they’re dealing with. Sometimes they have to make a lot of decisions very quickly because of the pace of things that are happening around them or they have to do it with constraints around resources and so forth. Are there learnings from your experience that when you have to go faster than perhaps you’re able to? Or how do you manage that so that you don’t overreach? Are there ways of navigating that so that you do the best possible work within those constraints?
Claire Forster: It’s a real stress point, obviously, for everybody in the not-for-profit sector. As soon as you mention change or one new thing, the first thing people are going to do is, “Oh, what’s going to drop? What’s going to drop off?” The first thing I’m going to tell you is just to relax. If you can, just relax and recognize we’re not all superheroes. That’s the first thing – be kind to yourself. I think that’s just an important message that we really all need to keep at the forefront these days. I’m starting off with something really soft, but it’s important. If you can, simplify it. I listed off a whole bunch of measurables at the start, it needs to accomplish this, this, this, this. Maybe prioritize those into what it absolutely has to accomplish the first time through, and then we can tweak and edit and manage as we go along. But you will overwhelm yourself if you try to make it perfect.
I mean, first of all, that’s not doable. But to minimize the disruption and to minimize the effort, and I say minimize effort, we don’t want to minimize the effort, but you know what I mean. To make it as easy as possible is to narrow down your objectives, chunk it out, break it up into smaller pieces. If it’s not manageable, talk to your board and give them some solutions and some options about how you could chunk this out and make it less onerous on the employees. We haven’t mentioned risk, but risk management. Do a trade-off between risks and rewards of this change. And to whoever the decision-maker is on whether we’re going ahead with the change, make sure you clearly map out risks and the rewards of this particular change. It’s not always the right time for change.
Elizabeth McIsaac: How important is data and evidence and number crunching in pushing up into that process? I mean, there’s different, obviously, requirements whether you’re talking to the board or bringing staff on, but how much of that needs to be really thought through in advance, or in the process of developing the change strategy?
Claire Forster: Well, presumably, or hopefully, you’ve done some kind of analysis or data upfront before the change. The most important or the most value-added out of the data collection or your analysis ahead of time is in eliminating fear. The more that you can share, and with that, hard facts and hard data is great because, although in these days people do challenge alternative facts, but the more facts you have to build the case for change, the better. The more buy-in you’re going to get. But again, keeping diversity in mind as well, think about how people absorb information differently. Some people love facts and data and analysis and some people don’t. If you can, offer different levels of detail.
For those of you that want more detail, here’s my big binder on all the data that backs it up. Or, here’s what we submitted to the government, here’s the analysis, the case we built for the change. That’s what I would use that for. Culture plays a part here too. If you’re in with a bunch of scientists and engineers or statisticians, data is wonderful. I’m not dissing either group here – if you are with social workers, etc., when I want to hear more of the soft versions for change, the whys and the hows versus the data that proves that we need it.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Read the room.
Claire Forster: Yeah.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Sometimes people can be surprising, they might be in one category of worker, but they actually think and feel or process in a different way.
Claire Forster: Yeah, well, absolutely. That’s the fun thing about this. Sometimes you’ll be surprised at certain employees. They’ll have all kinds of information that you had no idea about and it could be really enlightening.
Elizabeth McIsaac: A lot of your comments have come from the point of view of the person leading this change, bringing this forward. There’s a question for all of us to think through. Say you’re an employee or in a middle management position and you want to positively contribute and influence the change, but you don’t feel it’s being well led or proactively planned. How do you create room for yourself in that process – coming up to the leadership that’s driving it?
Claire Forster: The good part about this is if the person leading it is doing all of this, asking questions and communicating a lot, there will be opportunity for you as a manager to say, “Hmm, have you thought about…? Or, I’m a little confused… or this isn’t sitting well with me.” Or, even if you don’t want to own it yourself, “Well, I was just chatting in the lunchroom or I was chatting with my spouse…” Blame it on the spouse, that’s a good one! “And they asked, they were wondering why we haven’t done X, Y, Z?” And then as a manager, there’s nothing in the rule book that says you can’t tell your own story or add your own narrative to your own team to make things more interesting or give them more information about how you are perceiving it, what you are thinking of, what you are worried about and how you are dealing with that.
You can do it both ways, you can manage up, and also, obviously, it depends on the relationship and your culture, again. You may have the kind of relationship where you can just wander to that person and say, “Look, I’m having some real issues with this and I don’t think you’re doing A, B, C, D, E.” Change is a good time for more direct communication. I believe that there’s usually more leeway for more open and direct communication. Now’s the time to do it.
Elizabeth McIsaac: It’s a window of opportunity.
Claire Forster: Yeah, it is.
Elizabeth McIsaac: And keeping it productive and constructive.
Claire Forster: Always try. I mean, it’s human nature. All of us tend to be a little bit negative, “Oh no!” But this is always an opportunity for something. It may be an opportunity for you to start looking for another job, who knows? And that may not necessarily, again, be a bad thing, but there’s always some kind of opportunity for something in there.
Elizabeth McIsaac: This is a little bit more of a specific example, but I think it could be very generalizable. An organization that’s going through succession planning – it’s happening as a very deliberate and intentional process in the organization and moving toward a new leadership model. Are there things that they should pay attention to? I.e., should the organization shift its values and culture before the ED leaves, if that change is coming? How do you pace some of these things in order to allow a new leader to set the new trend? Where there is an abundantly clear transition happening, where you have that transparency that you’ve talked about in communication – this change is coming, this is what it’s going to look like – do you pile it all in together? How do you pace that out?
Claire Forster: Ooh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Let’s assume that you didn’t know beforehand the new CEO you’re bringing in. Sometimes you’ve seen a leader out there, they’re really good at A, B, C, so you’re bringing them in to do that change. Let’s assume your CEO’s left, you’re doing a normal CEO hire, but that person has a lot of ideas for change. I would bring the CEO in to lead the change, the two together. It’s too disjointed and too complicated I think to do the two together, and because it’s always going to be change when you bring in a new CEO, even if you’ve got the greatest organization on the face of the earth, a new CEO is going to bring about change.
It’s ideal to lockstep the two together, and presumably this new CEO will start… You always start with the cultural change at the top. That person is going to embody those new values and it’ll all start from there. The more you fracture the change, the more complex it is going to get and you may lose momentum for the main change you’re trying to achieve. It could get diluted, it could get confused. So I’d put the two together.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Great, thank you. A number of questions around who you’re dealing with. The team composition makes a difference, or does it make a difference? If you have a mix of long-standing employees and a bunch of new people, if you have a virtual team that operates quite remotely or in isolation a bit, if there’s a collective structure in place, if the organization is trying to be flat. Are there best practices or learnings around how to assess the group that you’re dealing with, in terms of how you decide to bring them into and bring forward the change?
Claire Forster: That’s another really, really good question. There’s an equity component here as well. I mean, there’s an equity component in absolutely everything we do. But this is another area that you really need to be conscious about. Normally there is either a project team, or you pull together a team of some of your key leaders. It’s critical that this team be as diverse as possible. You mentioned new and old, virtual and in the office, you need to include a mix of both. The other way it needs to be diverse – you have popular leaders and less popular leaders. You need both. You obviously need people who are going to be able to influence. I also like to have one very chatty person on the team. Particularly if you’re working with consultants, you need someone who’s going to get it going, someone to kick it off, those awkward pauses, those kind of things. Remote teams can be difficult, but with the technology now, obviously you can include them into meetings and into rooms. It’s less of an issue than, I would say, it used to be in the past.
Your messaging may change a little bit if you are dealing with a board and change. I find with boards, you really, really need to focus at the strategic level. It may sound obvious, but it’s not. Some of your board members like to get into the detail. But with board members, you certainly need to share the environmental scan and the rationale for the change to get their buy-in.
It really actually comes back to diversity from every single point you can think of, from new employees to old employees, everything that you can think of. That’s a lot, because if you’re looking at a team of seven to eight as your main team, that’s hard to do in all of that. But there are projects within projects and as long as you keep that front of mind, you won’t risk missing out on anything or missing a particular group of employees. Of course, you’ve always got to think about any accommodations that you might need to take to make sure the message reaches all of your employees as well, because that’s sometimes not something that people think of.
Elizabeth McIsaac: By extension, then, I would also, for a lot of non-profits that have very important stakeholder groups in terms of who they serve. There’s the employee equity, internally among the employees, but then if you are serving marginalized communities, how are their interests going to be impacted by some of the changes that you’re contemplating? Does that need to be (I think the answer is yes) but not should it be, but how is that well included in the strategy for doing this to ensure that that is part of – not an afterthought – but part of the process?
Claire Forster: I think any of your outward facing employees or employees that deal with your stakeholders are a critical part of that process. In one of the ideas I raised, I talked about going to your stakeholders and involving them. You can use those employees who are those front-facing people to be the ones doing that questioning. It is absolutely critical that when you’re dealing with those kind of communities that they can see that they have been involved in the change, because they’re an important part of the change. In some way or form, they’re going to be on the receiving end of a change as well. It’s good that you’ve raised that, because stakeholders are often left out of these kind of changes. Just like a lot of you in your strategic plans, you go out and do client surveys, you can do the same kind of things in organizational change projects as well.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Being mindful that the voices are able to be heard and upfront in the process, not as, “We’re going to do this, now how does it affect you?” But rather at the front end. You talked about whether or not you bring in a consultant, and I’m asking you as a consultant: is it always necessary? Maybe it’s just a question of whether or not you have the resources or the particulars of the change that’s being contemplated. Maybe a little bit of the pros and cons of when a consultant is going to be a really good idea – an external person or persons, versus, this is something you could do at home. Or don’t try to do this at home?
Claire Forster: Well, I do it at home! I’ve done this in both capacities, Elizabeth. I’ve done it as a consultant. I’ve also done it as being involved in HR and also as an employee not in HR. It really does come down to the expertise you have on your staff, the complexity of the change, and again, the skillsets that you have on your team, resources, money. You’re going to have to manage change, whether you have money for a consultant or not. There are a lot of resources out there to help you, and you may surprise yourself and find that you have a lot of people on your team that are actually good at extracting the information and analyzing the information you need to change. I think it is a good idea to have a small involvement of a consultant, even if it’s just helping facilitate the start. What are the measurables that you are going to decide to measure at the end? How do you come up with those? How do you know that they’re the right ones? You might need some consultant help with that and coming up with the right kind of questions. But I don’t think there was anything on there today, the ideas that I said, that you couldn’t start yourselves to some level. Absolutely sure, for sure. Everybody knows how to communicate. Certainly we’re not all good at it and some of us are good at certain kinds of communication and not others, but that’s the key. If you’ve got great communications people, bring them in right from the start as well. Money is going to drive a lot of that.
Elizabeth McIsaac: It always does.
Claire Forster: Yeah.
Elizabeth McIsaac: At the beginning, you talked about the importance of designing for scalability because of the ups and downs of resources, and the flow of that type of thing. Are there principles in how to establish that kind of scalability or examples just in terms of how do you think about building that resilience into the model?
Claire Forster: Yeah, it’s a tough one. Unfortunately, one of the tools that we use is contracts for employees, for sure, and trying to make job descriptions, I don’t want to say generic, but flexible. If you can chunk out work in categories that it would be not easy, but easier, to shift roles around. Obviously, the more generalists and the less super specialists you have, the better in moving forward. Contracts is a huge tool, it’s not a pleasant one because of uncertainty, but that is definitely one key tool that we use to the nth degree in the not-for-profit sector.
Also, when you’re recruiting, try to recruit for a mindset for flexibility and change. Share that. If your organization is one that’s not necessarily stable, or in an environment that’s changing constantly at the moment, make that really clear in your job postings and in your interviews. There are a lot of people that really thrive in those environments, and there are a lot of people that really don’t, but make it clear. You’ve got all kinds of tools at your hands, in your processes, and policies, and use them.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Terrific. I guess the last question I want to pull from the group is, and you’ve talked about it already, is the board engagement piece, and best practices of engaging them, even at the level of tactics, to really ensure that they are onside as you go along, and that you’re bringing them along with the vision. You’ve talked about bringing them the strategic pieces and the case for support and all of that, but are there additional layers to that that you would recommend?
Claire Forster: The thing I find with board members, and I am one, is repetition. This sounds silly, but board members are only there for a few hours every couple of months. Everybody needs to be told something three times. With a board member, they need to be told six. I would involve board members with your staff at some sessions, bring them together. There’s nothing that gets a board member on their toes more than putting them in front of staff, where they might actually have to answer questions. I found that works really well – I’ll use strategic planning because that’s one obvious example – getting your board and staff together for strategic planning is great. It works for change as well. When you’re sharing the case for change, share it together so that the board members are hearing the same case for change as the employees and it just brings a different lens, brings the board members closer to the actual change. Keep them on the hot seat and they’ll be more accountable.
Elizabeth McIsaac: That’s great. We are almost at time. Over to you, if you have one last piece of advice or learning that you’d like to share before we close down.
Claire Forster: I’m going to end where I started, which is being sensitive to where we are in the world right now and not being too hard on yourself and understanding that when people are getting upset nowadays, it might be transference, it could be something they’re dealing with at home. It really is a tough environment right now. Be kind, and celebrate, and have as much fun as you can. If you can think of a silly question to ask, but that’s relevant to your organization, throw it in there. Make fun of yourselves during this as well. I work that way and it certainly has helped me during my career. If things aren’t going well, as I’ve been telling myself ahead of this session because I was nervous, nothing lasts forever because you know change is going to happen.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Excellent piece of advice. Through a lot of what you were saying, I just kept thinking, don’t hold out for perfect, because it’s going to change.
Claire Forster: No, absolutely not. Do not be a perfectionist, please. It makes your life much harder.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Drop that one! You can still say it in the job interview, but when it gets down to the job, lose it.
Claire Forster: Love it.
Elizabeth McIsaac: Excellent. Thank you so much, Claire. This was incredibly helpful. I think that we’re always going through organizational design, and rethink. I mean, that’s just, in my experience, that’s part of evolution. You have to always be ready to come back and ask these questions and think this through. This has been incredibly helpful. I hope it’s been helpful to everybody in the virtual room. I’m sure it has. Certainly from your questions, I know that there was a very engaged audience, so thank you to everybody.
