How We Work

Client Need	Services Provided
A manufacturing company installed automation for the first time. Employees were wary of the new technology and concerned about job losses and adapting to the automation.	Irish Rose provided training to the employees to help them learn the new system and develop comfort with the change.
A nonprofit organization, after 20 years in operation, was concerned that they were not prepared for a changing future in the services they provided.	Irish Rose Consulting facilitated a program evaluation and strategic planning process to review the present state of the nonprofit and help the board to reimagine the organization for the future.
Teachers, school counselors, and social workers in a hurricane-impacted Caribbean country were experiencing the ongoing stress of destroyed facilities and limited resources while working to help children still dealing with the trauma caused by multiple environmental disasters.	Irish Rose, working with local partners, developed and delivered a training program to help school personnel understand the issues involved in dealing with trauma, and provided tools to help the teachers and counselors provide better supports to their students and themselves.

If your organization is struggling with change, or just wants additional help, most of our projects proceed through the following steps:

Needs Assessment and Contracting

It all starts with a conversation. We’ll have a chat with you to learn more about the changes you’re facing, and what you might need help with. We’ll ask a lot of questions in this phase to better understand where you’re at, and where you’d like to be. We’ll also try to make sure that where you’d like to be is a good place for you to be! We occasionally run across projects where a client is convinced that if they just change X, all would be perfect in their organization, but after some more digging we all learn that changing Y would have been better. We want to help you get to your desired end-state as smoothly as possible, but it doesn’t help any of us if we get you to the wrong destination! Finally, we’ll do our best to understand the challenges and barriers we might be facing together along the journey.

With your needs understood, we’ll negotiate a contract with you that will lay out the desired change and give you a rough idea of the process we’ll use to get there.

Data Gathering

Change involves moving from your current state to a desired end-state. To manage it effectively, all participants need to thoroughly understand both the current state and the end-state. It’s also important to understand all the variables involved in the change. We place a special emphasis on understanding the humans involved in any change, because their health and well-being are critical to having a successful organization. Our data gathering process often consists of automated surveys and individual interviews with key players to better understand their needs. For process changes, we’ll also explore relevant organizational data to ensure that we understand the ramifications of the change being implemented.

Planning & Implementation

This phase is the most unique from project to project, because each change we implement is unique to the organization or community. We place a great emphasis on developing a detailed plan for the change so that all involved know what to expect as the change process plays out. We will often use change models to support our efforts and ensure that we don’t miss critical steps along the way. With a plan in place, implementation can take many forms. It might be rolling out a new training program, developing a new mission statement for an organization, or managing the implementation of a new technology system. This phase of the project will normally involve many people, a lot of moving parts, and often a number of different organizations in the form of vendors, consultants, etc.

Evaluation

Was the change successful? It’s not always as obvious as you might think. Cultural changes in an organization can take months or even years to complete. With technology changes, employees might accept the new technology in the short term, only to return to old ways of working weeks later. Any change requires a period of consolidation to be successful. Many organizations fail to build in an evaluation step. They congratulate themselves on a change well-implemented in the short term, and then months later wonder what happened to their shiny new process. The evaluation phase can collect data from and provide ongoing support to the people impacted by change to ensure that they are internalizing the change.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Not all of these steps will be included in every project. We often work with clients that want to plan and implement their own change, or perform their own final evaluation. That’s why we place great emphasis on the Needs Assessment phase of any project, so we can tailor a change program that works for your organization or community.

Want to talk about change? We’d love to! Get in touch with us. We’re happy to help talk you through a problem, even if you’re not ready to hire us.