Organisational Development

This stage is all about the Core Group enabling participation and mobilising their ideas into action.  It is a great opportunity for the Core Group to deliver something tangible together.  It helps to strengthen their own connections and relationships and gain a greater understanding of their individual and shared strengths and skills, vital for team working moving forward.

What is the Launch and why is it important?

The Launch or Re-Launch of a CoP is the first opportunity for the Core Group to clarify 'Why' members/prospective members should get actively involved.  It provides space for meaningful contribution and feedback on ideas for priorities for progress and clear, visible leadership with strategic framing from the Sponsor.  As such, the event sets the tone and reinforces the values of the CoP, including the importance of equal voice, inclusion and active participation - it is a call to action. 

A Launch event will usually be shaped and designed to meet the following objectives:

• revisit the premise of a CoP (active participation) and share 'journey/story' so far
• set out the 'Why members should participate' and 'What's in it for me' (including Sponsor/strategic alignment)
• share emerging ideas generated by Core Group and 'why'
• seek feedback on ideas providing sufficient time for every member to contribute for example in small break-out groups
• provide clarity around next steps (when communicate action taken from their feedback) and timeline
• deliver a clear, tangible call to action around active participation
• capture data to understand 'who's in the room' and initial appetite for participation

What actions do we need to take as part of Initiate?

1) Mobilise Core Group

As the Core Group mobilises to deliver the Launch event, it is likely the members will take on different roles.  It is important to take time to clarify those roles and confirm responsibilities and capacity moving forward, in the context of the feedback/actions arising from the Launch. 

In line with the purpose, the Core Group will need to reflect on what's realistic and achievable and create an action plan or use Trello.  Other Core Groups have found it useful to diarise the plan into their outlook calendars, including Core Group check-ins (and monthly coffee catch ups as appropriate).  These meetings then provide a cadence to enable accountability and momentum, vital to progress and ultimately deliver on actions.  It is also helpful to update your Sponsor, seeking further feedback or opportunities for alignment (as appropriate) and diarise a subsequent catch-up, in line with a key deliverable in your plan.  And finally, to initiate your communications plan with an update to CoP members on next steps and a call to action.

2) Establish mechanisms to understand value creation

It is critical to establish mechanisms and plan to collate data for example:

• set up an excel spreadsheet to log participation numbers at events and to record quarterly web analytics data
• identify measures that will help understand the impact of project outputs/outcomes
• identify 1/2 points to survey members to understand their experiences of participation of learning events, adapting the MS Forms template
• seek regular feedback from the Sponsor and/or those colleagues working on projects to understand broader impact on the ‘domain’/University

Visit Stage 5: Understand impact to find out more.