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Part 3 of 5 – Program Design

Sep 28, 2020

• 90% of organizations don’t use a planning process      • People focus on desired results only 50% of the time    • 71% of people are disengaged     • 88% of companies lack an effective plan to grow

Gallup Organization

You successfully started your business and now it’s growing. You may be wondering, “Are we as productive as we could be despite the fact we’re hiring more people?” Without a sound plan for organizational health, many organizations end up with a mediocre or poor culture that drives their best people away and provides a haven for the disengaged. Each month, I have provided information on the five processes needed to ensure your organizational wellness. They are:
  1. REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
  2. HUMAN SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
  3. PROGRAM DESIGN
  4. IMPLEMENTATION
  5. TESTING AND MAINTENANCE
In this third of five articles, I support you in understanding the third step: PROGRAM DESIGN A healthy organization has a regular plan to educate, mentor and integrate best practices to make sure their people are learning and growing. Your program design for working on your human systems is key to making certain you address and improve how your people think, speak and act with one another and those you serve. I work with thought leaders, visionaries, and change agents committed to creating success by developing highly productive individuals and teams. When I work with them, here are just some of the challenges they face:
  • Communicating to people a vision and path for a successful culture transformation
  • Inspiring trust and courage so people take the leap of faith needed to build healthy culture
  • Receiving sufficient financial buy-in and support
  • Addressing and winning over naysayers, doubters, and clingers to the status quo
  • Overcoming their fear of change, their people’s fear of change and growing pains
What is program design? A program design is a sound plan to educate, mentor and coach all your people in new processes you implement, to create a value-based environment with a high priority of developing leadership and personal responsibility in all. Why? Just as a builder needs a good blueprint, so too, your people need a well-designed program that takes them all the way to the other side of the cultural transformation process. Consider:
  • Do we have a sound plan for adopting a values-based, personal responsibility culture model?
  • Have we mastered the tools, model and know how to promote and communicate it in a unified manner?
  • Do our people attend regular training to increase their self-awareness, self-management, and awareness of others and to be effective in managing relationships with managers, peers and clients?
  • Do our people know how to create individual plans for professional development and share them with their managers?
  • Do our people all know common, specific communication and leadership skills?
  • Have we integrated opportunities into our workweek for every person to demonstrate new skills?
  • Do we have an orientation process in which all new hires learn about our culture, are trained in our unique toolset and processes and know how to quickly participate in the organizational culture in a meaningful way?
If you can’t answer yes, you may want to consider adopting a plan, so you don’t inadvertently plan to fail! For help in establishing and analyzing your essential human systems, call me! Judy Ryan (judy@LifeworkSystems.com), human systems specialist, is owner of LifeWork Systems. Her mission is to help people create lives and jobs they love. She can be reached at 314-239-4727. As published in St. Louis Small Business Monthly, January 2014