Organizational Change - Case 2
Industry: Universities and Colleges
The Need
A new PeopleSoft financial system replaced and integrated virtually all of a university's financial systems on all its campuses. Ensuring that the system met the many business needs of the University was key to the project’s success. The University considered an integral part of the project to be an organizational design that included structure and business processes, classifications, compensation and reward systems, training and assessment, and performance management. The University wanted organizational design to play an important role in the implementation of the new financial system as they began strategizing about how best to cluster their schools and departments to ensure efficiency, accountability, data integrity, and process consistency.
Solution
Dashe & Thomson provided an experienced organizational design consultant to work with the university’s design team. The Dashe & Thomson consultant worked with leaders of individual schools and departments within the university system to implement and staff business processes related to the new financial management system. He designed school-specific staffing models using the Star Model. He guided organizational leaders in creating and acting on a communication plan/timeline to prepare for changes associated with the implementation. The plan included transparent and frequent communications, coordinated with the project-wide communications to avoid miscommunication.
Results
The organizational design team was able to incorporate a variety of methods and resources they could share with their staff to help staff manage the stress and uncertainty inherent with change. The team was able to communicate actively to faculty and staff about their activities and the process. The communications plan enabled sharing project information with college and administrative staff, based on the premise that the better informed staff is, the smoother the implementation will progress and the more supported staff will feel.