Abandoning dusty old traditions to successfully redistribute decision-making power.

A Canadian professional healthcare society had a political culture operating with a hundred-year-old culture. Using a parliamentary government structure, decision making was constituency-driven, overly complex and fragmented, creating the expectation that things would take forever. As a result, the organization was unable to accomplish anything to satisfy anyone, except items the executive director pushed through. However, over time, their exec began to get caught up in the confusion and was soon facing a rebellion and secession.

TC Solution
First, steps were taken to have a variety of member leaders attend TC learning events over a period of time; thus, creating a core group of educated past, current and emerging leaders. For two years, TC conducted education programs among each of the organization's disenchanted constituencies.

Second, TC helped determine what it would take to successfully lead this provincial organization into the future. The healthcare delivery system in the province was evolving rapidly and there were major tensions as to what the role of the association should be. Younger members wanted the association to organize and represent them as a union; older members did not. Complicating matters, the national-provincial relationship was not healthy. The province did not feel it was receiving value.

Once a parade of leaders went through the TC education events, a common base of knowledge was created to set the stage for governance reshaping. The next step was getting buy-in for these changes from the House, requiring three meetings over a two-year period.
Finally, a meeting was held with the new board to ensure that the right type of policy for knowledge-based decision making was being put in place to drive the cultural changes needed.

Results
Because this situation involved an organization whose culture was very affectionate about its traditions, TC's change strategy was guided by two principles. First, change had to be incremental and managed over a period of time—pace was important. The second was the process of continuous education of past, current, and emerging leaders in order to construct a clear, common and continuing vision of what success will look like.

The most dramatic change is that the board now leads the organization. The old bromide was that the job of the board was not to run the association but to see that the association was well run. Now, the job of the board is to define and assure that members are getting value; it is now the executive director who sees that the association is well run and managers who to run the association. Therefore, the Executive Director is now truly a CEO.

The outcome of this transformation: decision-making power has been successfully redistributed to better position the organization for the 21st century.

To learn more about how Tecker Consultants can help your organization, contact us at 215.493.8120.