The art of planning and leading collaborative working sessions
By Ariane
The biggest lesson I have learned in the past two months working with our clients is the value of designing and leading productive, collaborative work sessions.
Since the beginning, our initial scoping has kept us on track to focus on the main problem we are trying to solve and their goal of streamlining their operations and human resources strategy as they scale. It became clear that our clients, the three leaders of the nonprofit organization, are extremely knowledgeable about their industry and business practices. Rather than presenting them with research and recommendations, they could actually benefit more from an outside perspective to help them step back from the day-to-day operations of the organization. For this reason, we made sure to leave flexibility in our consulting approach so we can adjust next steps as the project evolves.
Inspired by design thinking sessions we have done in the past, we decided to lead our clients through “workshops”, using our meetings to capture their knowledge and expertise from different angles. Between sessions, my partner and I integrate and analyze the information to come up with a new viewpoint that helps them identify pain points and prioritize resources. Setting up the structure ahead of our meetings prepares us to lead our clients through a new thought process that allows them to use their knowledge to efficiently fill in the gaps during our collaborative sessions.
We started by helping them break down their organization logically so they can see how resources and labor are distributed within the nonprofit. During one session we documented and organized main activities and goals on four levels–by organization, program, department, and team. On their own time, they documented 60 individual positions and job responsibilities in a spreadsheet. My partner and I used pivot tables and graphs to visualize employees and volunteers grouped by background, recruitment, skill level, reliability, team, role, labor hours, and critical tasks. This dashboard provides them with a comprehensive view of their human resources and acts as an interactive tool they can update on the back end as their organization grows.
Our clients also want to find a way to design constructive OKRs that help align individual goals with organizational goals, incentivize volunteers, and measure progress over time. The metrics should align with the nonprofit’s strategic goals and purpose. Between sessions, my partner and I researched related UNSDGs, and during our meeting we presented them with associated KPIs that best match the nonprofit’s four program goals. Given this frame of reference, they brainstormed in great detail all the stakeholders and metrics they could think of for each program. Between sessions, we set up a grid to cross-reference their three departments and ten teams with each of the four programs, leaving blank space for them to reference the KPIs they brainstormed to set OKRs for each team.
With two meetings left, we plan to drill down to the final level to help our client assign OKRs to individual employees and volunteers. For our final presentation, we’d like to present recommendations on how to incentivize employees and volunteers based on their background, job type, and goals. We also want to guide them through the process of creating their own OKR dashboard to track individual and organizational progress and performance in real time to ensure they are meeting the objectives set in their strategic plan.