DEEP Organizational Change Management Strategy Finalized
Moving to a new system involves more than just changing software—it changes how we work together every day. The DEEP Change Management Strategy (pdf), which has been approved by the DEEP Executive Sponsors, is our roadmap for making sure staff have the guidance, training, and tools they need to embrace Kindsight ascend on launch.
This strategy focuses on supporting our people. It is designed to:
- Show the Tangible Value: highlight how a shared system saves time—helping staff focus less on wrestling with manual workarounds and more on building meaningful relationship strategies.
- Keep Daily Operations Running Smoothly: provide practical, role-specific training sessions and post-launch troubleshooting teams to help minimize everyday disruption and manage workloads evenly.
- Respect Local Needs: Ground our work in the principle “As common as possible, as different as absolutely necessary.” This means creating shared processes where they make sense, while explicitly protecting the unique mission-critical or privacy guidelines (like Personal Health Information boundaries at WCM) specific teams rely on.
- Give Staff a Continuous Voice: Establish clear feedback channels so the core team can listen to real-world questions and adjust training resources dynamically as the project moves forward.
Our Core Change Enablement Pillars
To turn this strategy into reality, our change program relies on three functional pillars:
- The Change Network: A dedicated ambassador network consisting of peer representatives across Ithaca AA&D, including the Lab of Ornithology, and WCM. These members serve as vital local advocates, testing program messages and bringing localized feedback directly back to the core project team.
- Role-Aware Communications: We will provide clear, role-specific insights through predictable channels like our upcoming monthly newsletter, structured toolkits for managers, and training programs
- Continuous Organizational Readiness: Rather than evaluating readiness at the very end, we are building it into the implementation process. Using approaches like the quarterly Readiness Assessment pulse surveys we launched in May, we will actively track community sentiment and step in with custom support exactly where it’s needed most.
What’s Next and How to Engage
- Explore the Strategy: Detailed overviews of our North Stars, project governance, and stakeholder matrices are permanently archived right here on the DEEP Site.
- Connect with Your Champions: The DEEP Change Leaders are Trish Davis, Tracy Cary, and a DEEP Change Manager whose arrival will be announced shortly. Within the next few weeks, we also will share the roster of Change Network members so that staff can find the designated OCM representatives for their areas.