Organizational Transformation: Transforming Organizational Decision- Making

Technical Information

This project spanned multiple years across one organization. It involved the following processes: departmental and organizational strategic planning, employee professional development as well as the institutional effectiveness team’s survey and assessment responsibilities for the organization.

Key Metrics

Adoption Rate

A growing number of departments initiated their own collaborative conversations, demonstrating a shift in organizational culture.

Strategic Influence

The team’s work was directly cited as foundational evidence for UNCA’s next strategic plan, showcasing its impact on high-level decision-making.

Increased Demand for Evidence

Increased demand for tailored survey questions exceeded the team’s annual capacity, signaling heightened engagement and interest in data-driven insights.

Objectives

This organization sought to shift its culture toward being more evidence-driven, where data informed strategic decision-making across all levels of the institution. Although the Institutional Effectiveness team regularly produced comprehensive reports based on campus-wide surveys and assessments, these insights were underutilized in departmental and institutional planning. The goal was to transform how data was perceived, discussed, and applied to drive meaningful organizational change.

Solutions

To improve data literacy across the organization, we implemented a multi-pronged approach including:

Targeted Engagement with High-Touch Departments: The team carefully selected attendees for their "collaborative conversations" based on the level of client interaction within their departments, prioritizing leaders and managers from high-touch areas. This ensured that participants were well-positioned to connect the data to operational realities and decision-making.

Data Selection for Impact: Charts and graphs were chosen following an initial analysis by the team, focusing on the most notable, remarkable, and non-routine findings. Data that started to tell a compelling story or pointed to actionable insights took priority over average or less meaningful results.

Streamlined Discussions for Depth: Over time, the team refined the collaborative conversations by presenting fewer data points. By limiting the number of charts shared, they created space for more focused and impactful discussions that encouraged deep engagement and exploration of connections between data and departmental activities.

Providing Context with Executive Summaries: To enhance understanding and set the stage for meaningful dialogue, the team provided participants with executive summaries. These summaries contextualized the data being discussed and served as a resource for broader application beyond the meeting.

Listen and Translate: One of the most important things that we did was listen to the mid-level managers and their employees. Oftentimes, folks would be talking about key data, in ways that fit in with their work, but not using the terminology form our surveys or assessments. In talking with senior leadership, we would translate these insights to be more applicable across the organization

Impact

The collaborative conversations and tailored surveys achieved significant cultural and operational shifts at the organization:

  • Strategic Integration: Data transitioned from a static reporting function to a dynamic tool driving institutional and departmental strategies.

  • Empowered Decision-Making: Departments gained the skills and frameworks needed to leverage data in solving challenges and setting priorities.

  • Sustainable Change: Over time, evidence-based practices became standard, ensuring that decisions across the campus were increasingly guided by reliable data.

  • Employee Engagement in Planning: Overall, departmental engagement in planning increased by 15%