Driving Organizational Change to Better Align to Mission Operations

Challenge

Leadership at a U.S. national security agency recognized that their current organizational structure was not suited for a world with increasingly complex threats and hazards. They partnered with Guidehouse to help them transform from an administrative organizational configuration to one more appropriate to their operational mission. The transformation provided a platform for the agency to evolve and modernize its culture, organization, and supporting business processes and deliver outcomes that position the agency for success.

Solution

Guidehouse provided organizational transformation and change management support that helped the agency evolve to meet its critical mission of protecting against threats to the nation’s infrastructure. Guidehouse managed the change through deployment of a comprehensive strategy, approach, and plan focused on people-centric change (i.e., development of a foundational transformational framework focused on strategy and desired outcomes), human-centered design (i.e., development of an iterative approach to understanding and designing a personal and empowering workforce and stakeholder experience), and behavioral economics (i.e., creation of environments that facilitate progress toward positive change).

Our national security specialists gathered and analyzed workforce, organizational, financial, and stakeholder feedback to validate and refine proposed organizational change concepts, resolve identified issues, and support leadership’s key transformation decisions. Implementing the strategy involved Guidehouse leading listening sessions across the country where we engaged more than 500 employees, who provided 3,500 points of feedback. The listening sessions were analyzed to identify major issues for resolution among divisions, mission support elements, and other organizational elements. Guidehouse developed more than 30 discrete recommendations to improve governance, human capital processes, organizational morale and culture, and stakeholder service.

In addition to developing the organizational strategy, Guidehouse also collaborated on a tactical level with each division and its corresponding mission support office to identify the appropriate governance structures and allocation of resources to gain efficiencies and ensure effective mission delivery. Guidehouse designed and executed a tailored project management approach to effectively manage the organizational transformation and the delivery of high-quality strategic, communications, engagement, coordination, and implementation activities, tasks, deliverables, and work products. This included work to determine staffing gaps across functions and develop staffing analyses for each office, highlighting inefficiencies, potential areas to realign, and next steps to achieve full staffing and operational status.

Impact

Execution of the organizational transformation and change management strategy, approach, and plan enabled agency leadership to chart a path for how they will evolve to meet the requirements for their mission. This effort provided leadership with the guidance and operational transparency necessary to deliver the next generation of their organization by better aligning its people and structure to succeed in its complex mission.