Building Sustainable Organizations
NCAA: One Team, One Future, a national office culture that holds itself accountable
SECTOR
Association
SERVICE
Strategic Planning, Employee and Stakeholder Engagement, Team, Meeting, and Retreat Facilitation, Learning Program Development
FORMAT
In person
The situation
A national office can be busy, capable, and still not working as one team. As part of its strategic planning, the NCAA set out to understand the culture of its national office and to build a plan for a more effective staff.
The NCAA is the nonprofit association that regulates intercollegiate athletics at colleges and universities across the United States, with more than 3,000 members and roughly 200 committees supporting student-athletes on the field, in the classroom, and in life.
We started with a new task force, a one-day kick-off, interviews, and a review of an internal culture survey. The task force found that three things were holding back engagement and productivity across the organization: communication, collaboration, and accountability.
What we did
We helped the task force prioritize the major themes, define what success would look like, and settle on the critical areas to address first. We facilitated team building with the task force and introduced a formal action planning model the group used to make progress on specific goals.
From there we worked with the NCAA to develop a Master Plan for the national office: a vision, a purpose, long-term objectives, and specific goals.
Then we built the programs that would change how people actually practiced the three areas of focus:
- Five core competencies, the NCAA Beliefs, with key behaviors for each, written into the performance evaluation process for every employee
- An organizational culture initiative, One Team, One Future, with an annual employee-nominated award for exemplifying the new competencies
- A team assessment that departmental work teams used to open discussions and change their dynamics
- A new-employee training program with peer mentoring and peer evaluations built into the flow
What changed
Employees and supervisors now share one set of evaluation criteria and performance expectations, a consistent process for setting and measuring goals, and a common language that starts on the first day of onboarding. The annual award raised the standing of communication, collaboration, and accountability across the office, and a communications plan made quick, direct communication across the national office routine.
The competencies, the award, and the training program are built into how the national office runs, and they signal a commitment to developing employees that the office continues to carry.
THE SERVICE BEHIND THIS WORK
Strategic Planning
Part of Building Sustainable Organizations.
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