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WS — Item 1 WORK SESSION STAFF REPORT Work Session Item 1 Date: October 4, 2010 To: City Council From: Jeff Karlson, City Administrator Re: Scope of Organizational Review Background Mayor Reinert asked me to outline the scope of the organizational assessment if staff were to perform an internal analysis of the organization. When formulating and then implementing an organizational review process, the most important considerations are: (1) what needs to be changed; (2) why are the changes needed; and (3) what specific benefits will changes produce. There are many different strategies and methods for analyzing organizations. A very helpful framework is to think of the process as managing change, which involves problem solving. I think the best approach is to implement a mix of strategies. When we're talking about the scope of the organizational review and subsequent change strategies, this can vary from minor "tweaking" to a complete transformation of the entire organization, which of course involves people. Therefore, before jumping into this process, I think it is important that we have a clear sense of mission or purpose that describes what the City is striving to accomplish. The organizational analysis will at various times focus on defining the problems (or opportunities) that need to be solved, on identifying change strategies to solve those problems, and on finding ways to make the required changes. The change problem is often expressed, at least initially, in the form of a "how" question. That leads to the "what" questions. What are we trying to accomplish? What changes are necessary? Then we'll have to ask the "why" questions to get at the ultimate purposes or functions and to open the door to finding new and better ways of doing them. Much of what we accomplish in our analysis will be done on the fly. We'll simply jump into it and hope for the best results. We will have to be flexible as we go through this process. Following are a few basic guidelines for us to keep in mind in the context of organizational change: 1. Communicate to employees openly and honestly the potential need for change. In other words, set the stage for change. Appreciate that employees will react differently to change.