Effective Governance in Workplace Transformation: Key Methodologies and Strategies

The Governance Office creates a methodology to manage its transformation program, roadmap, and performance. It leverages aspects of systems & design thinking, agile, lean, and other approaches. In all cases, the overall methodology combines industry methods and customized strategies.

Multiple vendors and partners often work in various areas of the transformation initiative, bringing their unique methodologies and approaches. The Governance Office needs to understand these approaches well enough to coordinate them as necessary with the program at large. Incongruent analysis, misunderstanding of the workforce strategy, misaligned timelines, and lack of coordination for one-to-many capabilities such as data analytics, are commonplace outcomes when this alignment fails to occur.

It's helpful for the Governance Office to identify a set of approved or acceptable methodologies to recommend to leaders and teams who might need help in approaching their specific initiative or program. Decision-making frameworks for process and policy design, change management, voice of the constituent assessment, or a methodology particularly suited for innovation or ideation, are all good examples. Again, governance doesn’t manage these various operational methodologies or underlying initiatives, but it understands their purpose in the business ecosystem and anticipates that adjacent initiatives and methodologies likely need guidance, harmonization, and/or socialization as a means of alignment as well as sharing valuable insights and outcomes.

Additionally, governance should build authoritative assets to allocate across initiatives including a charter and compliance, worker personas in the workforce of the future strategy, program cadences and timelines, approved change and communication strategies and their channels, and so on.

Governance runs a strategy that is equal parts operational execution and people readiness, with a constant focus on building the workplace and workforce of the future.

Here are some common components one could expect to find in a transformation-related Governance Program:

Operational Execution

Operational execution is a delicate balance of oversight and enablement for the governance office. While most transformation-related initiatives are executed by the corporate business functions, IT, and the BUs or departments, all have cross-organizational implications. To glue this model together, governance needs to direct useful guidance to accountable leaders, ensure proper cross-functional involvement and compliance, and maintain consistency towards the people and stakeholder agendas. For this to happen, the governance office is well served with capabilities in solutions/product management and with access to digital/organizational transformation expertise to understand, reason, and advise the business on the relationship of their pieces to the enterprise whole. Additionally, for governance to remove obstacles and accelerate momentum, high-functioning relationships with other leaders and direct access to executive sponsors, the CEO, and/or the Board are critical.

As described earlier, the transformation governance methodology will need to identify and oversee horizontal initiatives that bring building-block capabilities to the new organization and its operating model. Examples of these key initiatives include:

• Knowledge & Data Strategies
• Resource & Service Management
• End-to-end Service & Product Delivery
• Strategic Workforce Design & Worker Experience
• Customer Experience
• Culture and new ways of working

Related - with transformation relying on frontier technology to both lead and follow business transformation - key technology and architectural initiatives that have a one-to-many impact on transformation plans are prioritized and contextualized in terms of business requirements, and overseen via the governance process. Common examples include:

• Enterprise Architecture Strategies & Standards (including “big bet” platforms)
• Data Strategy & Architecture
• Content & Knowledge Architecture (e.g., taxonomies, assets, etc.)
• Generative AI & other AI/ML Management
• Modern Security Architecture (e.g., Zero Trust Architecture, MDM, devices, IoT)
• Identity and Access Management (e.g., RBAC)
• Analytics, Metrics, and Insights
• Productivity & Collaboration Platform Management
• Interoperability and Ecosystem Design Management

Lastly, effective governance hinges on clear accountability and informed decision-making, achievable through a systematic approach to measuring progress and outcomes. Given the diversity of stakeholders and varying work methodologies, a broadly applicable, deployable, and adaptable measurement system is essential.

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Logical Design Solutions (LDS) is a digital strategy and design consultancy for global enterprises. We create experiences that transform business and help people work successfully in the new digital organization. Clients come to LDS because of our reputation for intellectual rigor, our foundation in visionary experience strategy, and our commitment to enabling digital transformation inside the enterprise. Learn More about how LDS has dramatically improved the way that some of the largest corporations in the world do business.