Change becomes everyday business:
Change consulting in the non-profit sector
How does a major change process move from the project to control structure without losing drive? Consulting case of a non-profit organisation in the context of Neuwaldegg’s change management consulting.
An Austrian non-profit organisation in the middle of a change process. This organisation with a long history and tradition has been working on its future viability for several years: by streamlining branches, reducing costs, developing growth strategies and innovating the range and practice.
We accompany the change from the beginning. The project structure that has been working since then is coming to an end. Now the transformational change is to be transferred into the control structure. The concern: loss of innovation and slipping back into old patterns.
Change becomes everyday business
The aim of the new control architecture is to transform the change into “everyday business” and send the signal to the organisation that the change has arrived within the structure. It is not just the core team and steering group, as well as the teams in the projects who should be responsible for driving and monitoring change but all the strategic and operational steering committees within the organisation. However, the power of the project structure should not be lost when it becomes “everyday business”. Hence the question of a disrupter who constantly brings ideas from outside into the system on the one hand, and of new meeting formats for the committees to keep an eye on the indicators for change in a change cockpit on the other hand.
Finding the “disrupter”
With a small team from the organisation responsible for strategy (programmes), structure and processes (communication channels) and personnel issues, we translate the control architecture to the existing committees in repeated cycles and develop the appropriate meeting formats. The transition to the new structure and solution rituals from the project structure are also planned. We decide against another committee for the disruptive effect – innovation is also directly linked to day-to-day business and projects. The division responsible for innovation assumes the role of networking external initiators and productive disruptive energies from outside directly into projects and departments on specific topics.
Language is the decisive factor
The key in this project is not to find modern terms and formats but a connection to the centuries-old tradition and therefore the organisation’s ability to survive, which nevertheless carries the momentum for change. As a result, it is also possible to establish agile meeting formats – even if they are not called that.
The co-creative development (consultants/clients) in repeated cycles ensures that the solutions are sustainable and compatible.