What happens when the world’s largest Christian sports league for kids experiences unprecedented growth? Human Resources Director Priscilla Moore candidly shares the challenging new realities facing Upward Sports.
Need: “We’ve moved from a single service, creating Christian-based sport leagues for a half million youth, in 48 states to a shared service platform that now supports multiple divisions. Each requires unique staff training, marketing, information technology, and accounting. In this “in-between” season of organizational restructuring, employee’s sense change in the air, and they want reassurance. Recently, one staffer asked me, ‘Where are we heading? What’s my job going to look like?’
Strategy: “For staff members, organizational change is like walking up to the front door of a new building saying, ‘I’m not sure I want to go through.’ All they see is the door that involves their individual role. I want them to step back and see the bigger picture of how the bricks have been laid to build our organization: I want them to notice and appreciate our board’s decision-making process, how all decisions are discerned through careful review, rigorous analysis and concerted prayer.
Result: “By communicating clearly, transparently and often to staff, you create higher levels of trust that can help the organizational transition go smoother and faster. Trusting employees will buy in faster, even if they can’t yet see the benefits of the possible changes ahead. The staffer I spoke with experienced another by-product of trust, the reassurance of knowing she has a part to play at Upward Sports. Such trust can go a long way in helping an organization move productively through an ‘in-between’ season of change.”
P.S.
Is there an “in-between” season of transition taking place in your organization? What best practices, approaches and wisdom are guiding your interactions and approaches with your board, senior leadership, departments and teams?
