Developing an organizational structure that will transform an organization to meet the demands of its shareholders is difficult and challenging. One key to this process is communication. “An organization’s long-term survival may best be judged by its ability to manage change rather than by its current balance sheet” (Clampitt & Berk). Most organizations are more than able to crunch numbers and evaluate rates of return than they are capable of effectively measure implemented change efforts.
Here you will find an historical account of a nonprofit in need of reorganization, its challenges, the change model needed, and the changes needed to meet the demands of everyone affected by the change. David Hylan, the Executive Director of the Betty and Leonard Phillips Deaf Action Center in Shreveport Louisiana knew he would need to envision goals and create a new mission statement that would create income revenue from secure grant money as to create a continuum of care for the consumers they served. He understood that many of the consumers were in transition as well. Many were affected by governmental budget cuts to those who are disabled, as were the employees themselves. This article will outline how The Deaf Action Center in Shreveport Louisiana, transformed into a vital organization by reorganizing internally as well as externally.
The Organization
The Deaf Action Center in Shreveport , Louisiana is the only agency of its kind in north Louisiana Louisiana Louisiana
The Mission Statement
The Mission Statement of a nonprofit organization informs employees, shareholders, vendors, and consumers how it will achieve the organizations mission. There is a tremendous amount of employee buy in when the mission statement is geared towards inspiring those involved (Brueckner, 2012). The mission of the Deaf Action Center is to serve as a provider of direct services and as a coordinating, cooperative and referral center utilizing the services of otologists, audiologists, counselors, educators and other professional personnel. The Deaf Action Center (DAC), seeks to cooperate with and not compete with, all present agencies and organizations working in the field of deafness and other hearing impairments. It constantly evaluates its own purposes and accomplishments in relationship to the current and future needs of Deaf and hard of hearing persons. It seeks to fill the needs which are not being fully met, as determined by objective evaluations, and/or through technical support, it encourages other agencies or organizations to meet these needs (Hylan).
Issues confronting the Organization
The organization was not in a financial well standing two years ago. Governmental budget cuts in the state of Louisiana had left DAC with nearly a fourth of the budget it has been working with. The closure of the organization was projected to happen by the end of the funding period. Compounded to the fiscal issues, a problem in the region, Louisiana lost 60% of its American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting workforce to migration since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Louisiana
The Executive Director, David Hylan, decided to diversify and expand services outside of sign language interpretation that were being provided to various entities in the community as well as created an avenue to provide sign language interpretation as well as classes to teach interpreters through video conferencing and webinars. As with most other agencies, the DAC looked for other income outlets. The agency had been providing some American Sign Language training classes via video conferencing as well as some case management to clients, even though there was no actually funding in place to provide these services. It was then David Hylan decided to expand their services to provide webinars across the country to professionals to receive continuing education units (CEUs) which social workers, lawyers, and nurses all need for licensure renewals. The Deaf Action Center
Organizational and Structural Changes
Organizational structure is the base of operational policy development. The structure is responsible for the culture of the organization as well. The DAC found it necessary to change the structure of the organization to become more competitive, especially competing with so many other nonprofits who had suffered huge losses from government funding. The DAC would need to be unique and innovative when competing for foundation grant monies.
The first step was for Hylan to assess the type of change needed. When looking from the inside out, it is not easy to perceive the problem and the magnitude of the change. Those initiating change often underestimate the impact that the change will have. The upgrades needed to become a full video conferencing studio that needed professional guidance from similar service providers as well as educational needs of the staff. With all participants on board, an urgency was created, and along with it, an excitement for the upcoming change.
People Centered Change
People centered change alters the behavior, skills, and how productive employees are. For there to be people centered processes, communicating, motivating, leading, and interaction within the group must be ongoing (Dougherty, 2002). Hylan encountered a need to change how problems would be solved, the way employees would be educated in new skills, and a reconstruction of employee self perception.
Open communication between the different entities .opened up many questions that would be addressed before making any steps towards such an overwhelming change to the structure of the organization. Some of the questions that would need addressing were:
· Are the benefits readily observable?
· Will key relationships be adversely impacted?
· Is management prepared for employee reactions to change?
Strategic Change
It became evident that to add to an already underfunded over worked operation, it would be necessary to adjust the strategy of the former goals of the organization, including the mission statement, to foster the expansion of the new demands. By doing so, Hylan found himself considering adjusting the fundamental approach to how the DAC was doing business. To expand the presence of the DAC from a local community organization to a nationally respected cutting edge nonprofit, the kinds of products he would have available, how they would be sold would be as far reaching as state and national markets. It would also give partnering organizations the opportunity to provide CEUs in their prospective fields for a fee. This kind of collaboration is gold to prospective grantors. There is nothing a foundation loves more than to see than the money they grant be used as seed money for bigger projects, and become self containing. That is exactly what Hylan did; offer one or two nonprofit agencies an opportunity to buy in by educating their demographics through webinars for a fee to those seeking to earn continuing education units (Clamped & Berk).
Process Oriented (Funding) Change
Expanding the capacity to a continuous revenue source by offering CEUs to professionals, creating the capacity to offer ASL classes online, as well as other webinar services that included English as a Second Language classes to the Deaf, would more than make up for the lost federal grants that had kept the agency afloat for many years. The first step was to research foundations that would provide funding in these areas. Once national and community foundations were identified, the process of application submission and grant writing began.
Create Boundary Crossing Partnerships
The criteria in most grant applications are there has to be evidence of collaborative efforts with other community agencies. This ensures that the work of a nonprofit will have cross beneficially effect with more than just one agency’s demographic. They would be expected to explain the differences and similarities of the DAC to other agencies providing similar services, and they would have to show any efforts undertaken to eliminate duplication of services. Most importantly they would have to be able to eloquently tell the story of not only their mission, but stand above all the other agencies that were battling for an ever decreasing amount of funds. In this economy, even foundations are feeling the effects and are unable to increase the amount they give or continue to give the amounts they had in the past (Chatfield).
Structural
It was evident there was a need to streamline structures and with that there would be staff changes and changes to the organizational chart. In one case, it was determined there would need to be staff layoffs or the combining of two positions into one. New staff would need to be hired to over see the functions of new equipment if funding for these innovative projects were met through foundation grants. With these new observations, Hylan began restructuring the organizational chart to reflect the changes to the organization’s staff requirements.
Change Model
There were actually two change models applied to achieving the reorganization of the DAC. Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model was used initially. Midway through the change process the Tipping Change Theory was applied. The first discussion of the change model will be Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model and the steps taken.
Kotter’s Eight Step Model
Step One: Create an Urgency
The first step Hylan took in the Eight Step Model was to create urgency for change. This began when Hylan tapped into the intellectual capital of the shareholders and employees by brain storming different paths to take when scouting out new income sources. He then went to external forces by inquiring from vendors, sister organizations, and other community agencies to assess and evaluate the needs. According to Kotter, for the change to be successful, 75 percent of the organization needs to buy into the change (Farris, et al, 2009). Once he accomplished this task, he moved to the second step.
Step Two: Form a Powerful Coalition
To create a powerful coalition, one must convince people that the change in necessary. To accomplish this, strong leadership and support for external and internal forces are needed. Most importantly, change cannot be delegated. Hylan didn’t dispense duties to department heads and expect them to follow through, leadership began with him. He was willing to put as much work into making the change as those he led. His way of leading was to form change coalitions and work as a team.
Step Three: Create a Vision for Change
He created a clear simple vision that could easily be internalized by those affected by the change. To create the vision of change, he determine the values that are central to the change and developed a short simple summary that captured what he saw as the future of the DAC. He then created a strategy to execute that vision. He made sure those involved in the change could describe the vision to ensure they would buy into it and he communicated his "vision speech" often to himself and others.
Step 4: Communicating the Vision
Communicating the vision would be determinate of his success. To ensure the vision was properly communicated, Hylan and staff talked about the change vision often. He created an open door policy where honest dialog and concerns were addressed. He applied all aspects of operations to incorporate the vision for change. And most importantly, he led by example.
Step 5: Removing obstacles
Once the vision buy in was complete, obstacles to the change became apparent. He then identified the change leaders and what their roles would be to deliver the change. He then set up a system to recognize and reward people who were making change happen. He then identified those who were resisting and removed barriers to the change.
Step 6: Create Short-term Wins
Nothing motivates more than watching the success of change. One way to do this is to create mini goals and short term wins. Some of the ways the DAC created short term wins was to find sure fire projects that were perceived as non threatening to those who would be critical. The organization grew slowly and did not jump into goal targets that were expensive. As funding came in, the studio grew with better equipment. It slowly evolved and Hylan was able to justify the investment with each project.
Step 7- Build on the Change
Kotter stated that change projects fail because victory is declared too early. Real change runs deep and there are no short cuts to lasting change (Farris, et al, 2009). Hylan did this by analyzing what went right and how to improve the change. He set goals to continue on the path of achievement.
Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture
Finally once the achievements toward change were met, he made sure it became part of the organizations culture. He made sure constant efforts to ensure that the change permeated through every aspect of the DAC. By doing this, it gave the change a solid hold in organization's culture.
The Role of the Leader
There are three leadership qualities of leadership, visionary, participant, and transactional which produce effective organizational change (Manz, et al, 1991). When leaders act as advocates for change, they won’t allow the process of change to falter from lack of attention. They are willing to invest their political capital to rally those affected. They must be the role model for those in the organization. They must be the decision maker and take responsibility for those decisions. They must be the voice, motivator, and enforcer. Others in the organization need someone to look up to while processing the change they are going through. A good leader will be assessable to them making the process seem easy.
The Plan to Overcome Barriers
Barriers to implementation include preoccupation with the day to day details, lack of teamwork, conflicting priorities, and funding issues. A good start is implementing a work plan to map out structure and time restraints. One of the strategies that were used at the DAC was an understanding that planning and execution is dependant on success. Execution takes time, especially when grant requirements usually demand evidence based outcomes that must be documented over time. Once those figures were in place, Hylan was able to reach out for funding in the private sector. The “tipping point” theory of change was implemented,, which means even with improvements that appear to be small and functions needed to empower consumers, they were able to serve more people with greater outcomes, financially as well as the quality of services with enormous impact that reached not only those who require our services locally, but also be a model for other agencies to implement when fulfilling their mission statements.
Conclusion
With these change theories in place, various foundation grant providers have given of over $1,000,000 since the financial crisis two years ago. The funding received has provided new jobs for professionals in this field, as well as acted as seed money for a lasting revenue source without outside assistance. Over the last year, just webinars alone, has generated nearly $60,000 in a year, not counting various classes via the web. As a community project and grant requirement, DAC has offered the use of the facility to other nonprofits to offer CEUs as an income generator. It is what grant givers dream of in a nonprofit organization. And here today is the final product of his and the organizations efforts. The video capibilities are exception and down right fancy.
References:
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