Standing up a new organizational department/division

Facilitating role, title, and process alignment across multiple programs to form a new division.

Synopsis

Multiple teams working on separate grants asked to combine their staff, processes, and policies to form a new, cutting-edge research division within a world-renowned healthcare organization.

Problem Statement

100+ individuals were assigned to one of 73 healthcare research grants and grouped into three programs. The number of team members and grants were growing quickly, causing the institute to re-visit their organizational chart and stand-up a new division to house these programs. A Director role needed to be scoped and hired for, and a new organizational chart and structure for the division had to be defined and implemented.

The lack of a consistent approach to titles, processes, and roles within each program caused redundancy and gaps in marketing planning, execution, and ability to measure and track progress equally. Roles and processes had evolved based on business needs, but changes had not been formalized, nor clearly and broadly communicated. As business and grant demands continued to evolve, new roles would be needed, but there was no set approach to defining them.

Approach

Interviews were conducted with ~75% of individuals staffed within the three programs to learn about existing roles and responsibilities, title nomenclature, and process and policy expectations. Interviews were conducted anonymously. Key themes brought up by multiple interviewees were shared with the Executives of the organization. Consultants learned about each individual’s role, what was working well within each program, and where the biggest pain points per program existed – in terms of processes, communication, decision-making, and overall team effectiveness and efficiency.

The qualitative data was aggregated, reviewed, and opportunities for improvement were assigned to categories based on the root of the issue. Categories included structure, subject matter expertise, systems and tools, processes, and best practices. Programs that scored highest in each of these categories were used as the example template for what the newly formed division would roll-out. Each opportunity for improvement was also assigned two ratings. The first indicated the level of value that would be added to the division if addressed, and the second rating indicated the level of effort it would entail to implement. Once ratings were assigned, each opportunity was posted to a matrix that demonstrated prioritization. Opportunities for improvement that rated high on value and low on effort, were considered critical milestones for implementation. Meanwhile, those which were low value and high effort were determined out-of-scope and not addressed in the final recommendations.

Aggregate interview data and organizational documentation (e.g., processes, metrics, tool instructions, etc.) were used to facilitate the development of role definitions and title alignment. Role definitions included the essence of the role, key accountabilities, and key activities. Role definitions were then aligned to the institute’s job descriptions, titles, and organizational chart through engagement and advisement from Human Resources (HR) on institution-wide policies, title naming conventions, and hiring requirements.

Results

• Project recommendations were successfully implemented and proved to be an invaluable reference for Executives and Human Resources in terms of performance evaluations, profession and discipline management, organizational design best practices, and business processes.

• Identified synergy points across the programs, as well as differentiators in terms of key accountabilities and functional roles. Socializing this information across all three programs prior to launching the new division, helped alleviate ambiguity in terms of what would change and how.

• Reduced and closed role and spending gaps and redundancies. Dollars saved were re-allocated to optimize planning, execution, and measurement efforts, which allowed more patients to be served.

• The well-defined opportunities for improvement matrix (with high/ low ratings for effort and value) were leveraged to evaluate programs and divisions across the entire institution.