Our Communications and Advocacy Division is one of six in the organization and responsible for setting the overall tone for our humanitarian work. We are very keen to know if there are existing models/best practices that will help us better understand if we are employing our resources in the most efficient manner possible. Thank you for your consideration.
The question you raise tells me that you are at the beginning of a substantial and challenging process for your division. I hope you will set up your foundation with my piece on organizational development on the ACT Web site as well as the recommended reading.
This background will help you understand how to align your division's structure and resources with the overall mission, vision, values and strategy for your organization. By selecting your most critical initiatives and restructuring and migrating capable human and support resources to them, you are empowering your organization to succeed in its key work. If in the course of reviewing your current organizational capabilities, you discover that your current organization lacks all the necessary resources to attain your goals, you may have to look elsewhere; these outside resources may include training/development programs to prepare current employees for new roles, new outside leadership/talent and enhanced systems capability. Initiating change in an organization creates considerable uncertainty and anxiety among its individuals. I recommend that at the very start of the process, you engage your people and inspire their commitment to developing a division that can more effectively achieve its goals; you may assure them that this change process is not about individuals, but how, as a group, they can make a stronger impact on achieving their humanitarian work. Also, as you create and review optimum models for achieving your initiatives, you may consider tempering them with considerations of feasibility and relative merit within your organization. There may be values, both published and unpublished, which drive the commitment and success of your organization that don't fit easily into a new model. You may choose to continue to support those values in your new organization, weaving them into any optimum model you consider.
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