— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential

Getting clear about where you are headed

Have you ever struggled with the clarity of process and procedures that enable you and your team/organization to make good collaborative decisions, to save time, and ensure that you are making the impact you are intending to make? Complex change with diverse stakeholders is always challenging, especially when you are trying to bring about that change collaboratively.

Collaborative Roadmaps are a robust tool that once you turn it into a visual representation, shows a clear and efficient path forward that identifies your steps as a team. Creating your Project Roadmap will help you answer Ron Lippitt’s three questions for meetings, events, any change work. If you want to make a meaningful difference - answering these three questions, gives you a better chance for success, they are at the heart of any change roadmap.

What is the purpose?
Who needs to be involved?
What conversations, what actions need to take place?

Some of you are saying to yourself, “Okay, that’s great - but I sort of already do that!” Also shown on the Roadmap, and what we’re often really after are these questions that can be answered once the roadmap is complete:

Who is getting it done?
Who are they doing it with?
When is it getting done?

The collaborative roadmaps we leverage at NEXUS4change are informed by two frameworks:

The P.L.A.N. project management framework - and

RACI + F model for stakeholder identification.

In a P.L.A.N.,

P is for Purpose, or WHY? you are embarking on this path,
L for Leaders and stakeholders, addresses the WHO? will be traveling this road with you,
A is for the WHAT? - the Actions or Agenda that has to be completed to get to your impact and,
N identifies the Needs you have to enable these actions that HOW? that will lead to impact.

RACI+F specifies the L - Leaders and stakeholders of your PLAN. It helps you identify who needs to be involved, coordinated, and facilitating your effort:

R - those Responsible
A - those Accountable
C - those [that need to be] Consulted
I - those [that need to be] Informed
+ F - those Facilitating

So let’s look at a roadmap:

The roadmap template example has 4 phases. You might have as many as 7, and or multiple sub-phases - consider what may make sense to keep your roadmap visually manageable - but the phases really depend on the specifics of your project, program, or initiative! In this template,

P - the Purpose is at the top.
L - Leaders and stakeholders are listed in the columns on the left,
A - the Actions are what your team is filling in across the roadmap, and
N - the Needs you identify - will go in the row on the bottom of the roadmap.

The top of the roadmap establishes your timeline and most importantly, it shows both the overall purpose for your initiative; as well as the purpose for each phase listed for each column.

The rows on the left of the template identify who you need to engage? Who will you need to coordinate, and involve? Who will facilitate?

And on the bottom is your REALITY CHECK: What are the needs and resources you have to track for each phase?

Let’s look at the rows a bit more. The first group listed are the people that need to be coordinated for your effort. They are the ones Responsible and Accountable for the individual tasks and items that need to be completed. They typically existing established groups in your organization like Operations, Finance, HR, Fundraising etc. Who needs to be listed here will vary depending on your specific project.

Depending on the scope of your project, some individuals might also be serving in more than one workstream. While these are sometimes one-person teams, each of these teams needs one coordinator, leader, or spokesperson - this leader “has the A - Accountability (from RACI+F) for that specific work stream’s tasks.

The next group are those that need to be involved: These are your partners, community resources, and your audience or program participants. You need to inform and more importantly consult them!

The third are the groups responsible for facilitating parts of your process. There is often a leadership team you need to engage - that includes those with the final say for your efforts go or no-go. The 2nd row in this section is the ‘Seed Team’ - which initiated the effort - and then turns into the ‘Steering Team’ that moves the project forward - the de facto project management team for your effort. The 3rd row here is what we are calling the Change Network - it includes representatives from each of the teams and work streams listed above and links them to one another. The work in this team ensures that HR knows what Fundraising is doing to coordinate with the Strategy group, for example. In the last row of this section are design teams that convened as needed for a specific outcome, for example for a training or educational event.

Finally, the Reality Check: What 4Ts [time, talent, treasure, ties] are needed to impact? What do we need to make this all happen? What hours, talents, budget, and connections are needed to make the impact that achieves your purpose? The image here is a bit misleading, because often the bottom row, the NEEDS for your project tend to take up quite a bit of space. You might even have numbered or bulleted lists there at the bottom.

A few tips for successful use of the collaborative roadmap are as follows:

Spend time on your purpose statements! The ‘Why’ is key, and needs to be what you return to when things get challenging.
Don’t bump the Needs to your second page. Use a larger format, or expand the entire roadmap over two pages, but don’t lose sight of the needs.
Get really clear about the core impact measures. Get really clear about the core impact measures that you list in the evaluation row and want your evaluation workstream team to track for every phase. And be proactive in communicating these impact measures to your leadership team! Finally,
Make sure everyone has access to the most up-to-date version of your roadmap!

Check out NEXUS4change’s webinar series of 30-min. high-impact change tool talks. Check our events page [www.NEXUS4change.com/events] for more on the power of Design Teams, the Change Formula, Collaborative Roadmaps, Appreciative Benchmarking and more.