Reinvention, Step 3 - the NEW Work Regimen.

The third and final element in the Organization Realignment Model is to rethink and document the Work Regimen to align with the new Beliefs Set and new Strategy Bridge. There are five categories to be considered in this step: Organizational Goals, Programs, Individual Objectives, Priorities, and Tasks. The specific information provided here is offered to achieve two purposes: acquaint the reader with the broad features and benefits of the Realignment Structure, while providing some insight into the current Realignment Structure of the authors' organization - QWLC.

Work Regimen
September 2010

1. Organizational Goals. Without goals any organization is likely to whither. Goals sustain a future-focus and, for many, provide the motivation to strive to achieve those things the organization has judged as essential. Goals are typically collective in nature, so that failure to achieve a goal is normally attributable to more than a single individual. Three primary QWLC organization goals are:

• Client Practitioner Retention: Retain 100% of past clients allowing for dormant periods.
• Practitioner Expansion: Annually double the quantity of RGB Certified Practitioners that consume license "counters."
• Profitability: Sustain a positive revenue stream sufficient to cover all costs and sustain a reasonable contingency fund.

2. Programs. Programs are well documented sequential steps that must be completed to achieve a specific outcome(s) that result in a product or service deliverable for customers (internal or external) on behalf of organization stakeholders. There are always "start" and "stop" cues, at least one "process," and at least one "decision." Process steps need not all be completed by the same person. Although there are many programs in any organization there normally only a few critical programs that support mission accomplishment (see also the posting on Beliefs Sets). The following core programs support QWLC missions.

• Client Care: engenders loyalty by serving current client needs while exceeding expectations.
• Marketing: creates customers and clients for QWLC services and products.
• Roadshow: stimulates interest in RGB Certification among workshop participants.
• Finance: accounts for expenses and revenues to inform decisions.
• Technology Maintenance: develops written guidance to help organizations.
• Web Presence: provides Internet access to technology for users and potential users.
• RGB Practitioner Certification: expands practitioner availability to users.
• Event Production: designs and implements capacity improvement events.

3. Individual Objectives. Organizational goals are achieved by attaining individual objectives that contribute to them. Objectives are assigned to a specific individual and are measurable as to quality, quantity and period of time (daily, weekly, monthly, for example).

Joseph...

• Green: 100% functionality from anywhere.
• Blue: Update CW Library, blog, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and LTODI monthly.
• Blue: Produce one viable Roadshow monthly.

Elizabeth...

• Red: Fiscal and Calendar stability with 3 to 6 months reserve.
• Green: Visit one selected Preferred Practitioner (counter-consumer) monthly.
• Red: Lead one viable RGB Workshop monthly.

4. Priorities. When tasks compete for time and attention there must be a clear set of priorities that allow people to make consistent choices among potential tasks. This sustains a healthy balance between effort directed toward urgent and important tasks. This is certainly true for employees, but it is also true of those clients being served.

• Client Support: provide support needed to contribute to the success of clients in their efforts impacted by our product and service delivery.
• Practitioner-base Expansion: offer RGB Certification options that grow the network of preferred users.

5. Tasks. Tasks are specific actions taken by an assigned individual using a combination of skills, abilities, knowledge, and requisite talent within the context of program requirements defined by the organizations structure. Tasks are most effective when aligned frequently with Goals, Objectives, and Priorities.

Joseph...

• Blue/Red Tasks: IT, Software, Library, Videophotography, Proposal Creation, Technology Development and Lead, Local Transportation, Transitions, Internet, Storage, Event Production.

Elizabeth...

• Red/Green Tasks: Data Entry, Office Management, RGB Lead, Client Connections and Lead, Communications, Shopping and Purchasing, Publications Production, Calendar and Scheduling, Finance and Accounting.

Summary

Most effective work gets done when it is well aligned with elements that comprise the Work Regimen explained here and are also consistent with the Beliefs Set and Strategy Bridge posted previously. It only makes sense that efforts across any organization structure be aligned so that synergy has a chance to make a contribution to output, and cultural capacity, as a measurable asset, contributes to the effective and efficient delivery of products and services to valued clients and customers. One recurring problem in many organizations (that is solved by this Realignment Structure) is the practice of making corrective action when things go wrong in isolation. The broader view that can only be achieved by reviewing the entire Realignment Structure (Beliefs Set, Strategy Bridge, and Work Regimen) is the best solution to a "tinkering" method traditionally applied.

Reinvention, Step 2 - the NEW Strategy Bridge

Once the rethought (or original) Core Beliefs Set had been adopted, it calls for the immediate review and recreation of the new Strategy Bridge element of the Realignment (Model) documentation set. The realignment documentation set is highly flexible in that a single set may be used to connect the Beliefs Set with the Work Regimen. In the alternative, however, multiple Strategy Bridges may be needed to assure clarity. There are five strategic categories in the Strategy Bridge that must be rethought (or created originally): Advantages, Scenario, Initiatives, Standards, and Products and Services.

Overarching Roadshow Strategy Bridge

September 2010

1. Advantages. The advantages section provides a short list of the most significant conditions that provide a more beneficial condition than may have existed previously. For some, as an example, the current economic downturn may be an advantage because of the abundance of qualified potential laborers. Current conditions provide advantages for QWLC at this time:

• The reasonable availability of highly qualified RGB Certified Practitioners.
• The maturity of the RGB Technology lends itself to replication.
• The proliferation of Internet systems such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
• The availability of "how to" videos that foster distance learning with realistic scenarios.
• The constrained revenues of organizations that can benefit from internal RGB Certified Practitioners as a cost saving measure.

2. Scenario. The scenario depicts the current conditions so that stakeholders have a unified understanding of those conditions. This unity concerning a realistic scenario a cascade of thinking into unified courses of action that make good business sense. The QWLC scenario is simple:

The Founders have worked diligently to create an informal network of users based on a common technology - the RGB Technology! This informal network permits one practitioner to support and assist another when help is needed, yet operate independently in the interim. Both internal and external practitioners use RGB Technologies on a routine basis and are able to quickly adapt that experience to suit any client organization with minimal effort. This means a fast and economical solution fora wide range of user organizations is now available. The Founders plan to expand this informal network and the user organization base through low cost Roadshow events that "recruit" new practitioners and expand the user organization base. This steady expansion will perpetuate the growth and strength of the technology well beyond the mid-Atlantic region toward a national and potentially international audience.


3. Initiatives. Initiatives include new activities (even if "new" means stopping something that previously was ongoing). QWLC intends to start and sustain the following activities while curbing direct user organization service:

• Travel that includes conference showcase workshops for potential user organizations.
• Streamlined RGB Certification processes for practitioners performing simplified workshop templates that expand with experience and confidence.
• Provide low-cost starter kits included in a program of FastTrack RGB Certification.
• Increase reliance on the Internet options for distant learning.
• Engage available experienced RGB Practitioners in new user organizations as required.

4. Standards. Standards clarity the one acceptable methodology or results in product and service delivery. All necessary resources are dedicated to achieving standards so that performance is consistent and measured. QWLC will engage the following standards to achieve the stated initiatives:

• RGB Certification will only be extended to those who meet or exceed performance criteria.
• Support of RGB Practitioners in achieving stated user organization outcomes is paramount.
• RGB Technology will continue to be based on experiences gain in actual applications.
• The RGB Client Library and CapacityWareTM Software will be continuously revised to incorporate learnings posted by experiences RGB Certified Practitioners.
• Additions to the informal RGB Practitioners network will be approved by the Founders.

5. Products and Serices. These products and services clarify deliverables to clients and customers. The current QWLC mix is:

• Products will include: technology publications, software, videography, and tangible mementos.
• Services will include: recommendations, mentorship, Internet connectivity, and learning experiences.

Summary

The Overarching Roadshow Strategy Bridge is a means of achieving an expanded informal network of user organizations and RGB Certified Practitioners well beyond the mid-Atlantic region that potentially includes an national and international structure. It will be achieved by the travel and showcase activities in major metropolitan markets conducted personally by the Founders. The RGB Technology has proven to be an effective classical organization development system that deserves a broad-base of users achieved through carefully designed exposure in this highly personal manner.

Reinvention, Step 1 - the NEW Beliefs Set

In the natural course of an organizations' cycle - birth, maturity, and road to death, it is critical that a time be set aside to judge the need for a fresh start, a renewal, a reorganization, a reinvention, a new beginning - call it what you will. Signals may include a lag in profitability or in the case we'll discuss here, the "need for posterity," the notion of legacy. Our business, Quality of WorkLife Consultants (QWLC) is a little over seven years old. The business before that, based on the same technology, lived for eleven years. Before that, again based on the same technology, it was embodied in a yet different form but lasted for nine years. Those were all great runs. Yet each began to take a toll in the lack of innovation and enthusiasm of the founding partners. We were not immune from the laws governing this life cycle. In each case, however, we recognized the trends, the unmistakable patterns that would lead us to a rebirth, again applying the same technology with fresh wiring!

Beliefs Set

September 2010

The following five elements of an organization constitute the core of what drives people toward completing the organizational tasks to fulfill the core reasons for its existence. In both theory and practice the words and "soul" of what is intended are the Beliefs Sets unique meaning to the people in the organization that created it. It is not uncommon for several Beliefs Sets to be nested in a cascade from top to bottom of the structure in large organizations.

1. Purpose. The singular reason for the existence of the organization expressed in clear and concrete terms is a statement of its purpose. The organization purpose must justify all tasks, directly or indirectly, undertaken by the workforce. Although some core elements of purpose remain constant, the general elements may vary. As organizations are reinvented, the purpose requires a fresh examination and is subject to change because of the shift. The QWLC purpose has shifted over the last few decades but at its core has been the RGB Technology registered as CapacityWareTM - the body of written guidance as well as the parallel software. When the business first began the purpose was to achieve a sufficient revenue stream, next there was a concentrated effort to expand services and products while concurrently Certifying a cadre of RGB Practitioners, and now the purpose is focused on further expansion and preparation of the RGB Technology to survive a gradual retirement of its founders with a younger cadre. The newly evolved purpose, therefore, has become:

• CapacityWareTM Practitioner Support.

2. Missions. Missions are those disciplines that result in a product and/or service that are designed to generate revenue for the organization from customers and clients. There is always at least one internal mission (frequently the generation and use of capacity) and at least two external missions. In many organizations of sufficient size, missions become a primary catalyst for organization structure. The new purpose at QWLC is supported by three missions:

• Stimulate - a steady stream of prospects, that yield a growing number of RGB Certified practitioners.


• Educate - users and practitioners to meet demands from potential organizations.


• Support - users and practitioners in their efforts to serve their clients and customers.

3. Values. Values guide decision-making consistency - they establish priorities among alternatives. Value sets normally come in groups of five, three of which are normative and two of which may be aspirational. Values shift over time as people and organizations mature. Value sets may effectively cover an entire organization, but may be nested in each work group and team in a cascade from the board room to the loading dock.

• Innovation - implements increasingly more effective technology based on experiential learning.


• Fun - results when ways to make our events are light-hearted for participants and for us.


• Balance - brings to our work the ideal amounts of work and leisure in an acceptable mix.


• Respect - accepts alternatives and those who espouse them as equal and essential contributors.


• Profitability - aims for positive revenue flow in all endeavors given some initial investment.

4. Vision. A vision is a systemic (see Unifying Human System) articulation of a future state of the organization and its interaction with a defined environment. It is highly desirable that a single vision statement be articulated, but that it may have alternatives that account for most likely, most desirable, and least desirable scenarios. The following are from the current QWLC Beliefs Set:

• Most likely - Probable. Leisure travel with the right amount of stimulating showcase event(s) included at desirable locations that also fit with personal interests. The initial scheduled events in each Roadshow tour are arranged by the Founders and augmented by interested RGB Practitioners and others. Events are conducted primarily at regional conferences and in-house training workshops that incorporate potential RGB Certification options. These showcase presentations provide potential client organization decision-makers with a live sample of RGB Technology options designed to recover or develop internal capacity across the workforce. Long-term results include an organization culture resulting in an improved quality of worklife for leadership, management, supervision and non-supervisors as well.


• Most Desirable - Optimistic. Create a cadre of qualified Senior RGB Practitioners that are fully capable of executing the most likely vision independent of the Founders.


• Least Desirable - Pessimistic. The Founders create limited local opportunities that focus on conferences held in the Hampton Roads area with minimal travel advantages.

5. Customers/Clients. Customers and clients exchange revenue for products and/or services provided by the organization. The most profitable exchanges become a higher priority. Clients include:

• Local Government Organizations.


• Large Corporate Organizations at Multiple Locations.


• Independent Consulting Organizations.

Summary

The material above is both an explanation of the RGB Beliefs Set as part of the Organization Realignment Model as well as current the QWLC Beliefs Set. By its context it is the Blue body of work best accomplished in a large group environment over a lengthy period (several months) with numerous small groups chartered to validate and augment the central group effort. At QWLC the effort has been repeated every year or two with complete revisions in 7 to 11-year cycles. Key indicators that signal the need for revisit include but are not limited to the failure of missions to attract sufficient revenue or the imbalance in revenue attraction of one or more missions over others.