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The Challenge: A Department Without a Plan
In 1993, Victoria Sirianni became the head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Department of Facilities. She immediately identified two critical problems: the department had no strategic plan, and employee morale was unexpectedly low. A subsequent survey confirmed a breakdown in communication, mistrust between staff and supervisors, and a feeling among employees that their ideas were not valued. The department was selected for a business process reengineering effort, adding to the uncertainty.
Faced with these issues, Sirianni initiated a journey to transform the department into a self-perpetuating learning organization capable of supporting MIT's core mission.
The Solution: A Grassroots Strategic Plan
Instead of a top-down approach, the department's leadership empowered employees to shape their own future. The transformation began with two key actions:
- Diagnosis and Assessment: A department-wide survey directly asked employees about communication, feeling valued, and performance standards. The direct feedback, both positive and negative, provided a clear picture of the internal culture.
- Cross-Functional Focus Groups: Fifty volunteers from every level and role—including union staff, administrators, engineers, and supervisors—were organized into four focus groups:
- Communications
- Empowerment and accountability
- Leadership, management, and fairness
- Recognition
These teams analyzed the survey data, identified strengths and weaknesses, and developed concrete action items. This work culminated in the department's first-ever Strategic Plan, published in 1994.
Intervention: Building a Learning Organization
With a strategic plan in place, the focus shifted to developing employee skills and organizational capabilities. The department partnered with Dr. Carol Zulauf, an organizational learning expert, to design a leadership development system based on Peter Senge’s five disciplines of a learning organization.
The initial training modules focused on:
- Systems Thinking: Helping leaders and staff understand how they are part of a whole system and how their decisions impact one another. Causal loop diagramming was a key tool used to visualize these interconnections.
- Personal Mastery: Encouraging individuals to grow personally to become more effective leaders, based on the premise that leadership is an expression of who a person is. This included journaling and exercises on identifying conscious and "shadow" beliefs.
These sessions used various tools to maximize engagement, including small-group work, dialogue, and video clips. The goal was to build a culture where employees could create and sustain a self-perpetuating learning organization.
Key Competencies and Models
The program linked Senge's five disciplines to a competency model developed by W. Warner Burke. This approach connected abstract concepts to tangible leadership skills:
- Systems Thinking: Linked to tolerating ambiguity and conceptualizing.
- Team Learning: Linked to influence, confronting difficult issues, supporting others, and listening.
- Personal Mastery: Linked to recognizing one's feelings and having a sense of mission and vision.
Outcomes and Lasting Change
The department did not have mechanisms for a formal ROI calculation, but it tracked significant shifts in practices and attitudes. By 2002, 45 of the 56 original strategic action items were complete, up from 29 in 1999.
Significant Shifts in Organizational Practices
Key improvements following the implementation of the Strategic Plan included:
- Training: Moved from being documented for only 27% of employees to all employees, with course offerings expanding and aligned to strategic goals.
- Performance Management: Formal, consistent annual performance reviews were implemented for all administrative staff and feedback sessions for unionized staff, replacing an informal and inconsistent process.
- Recognition: Shifted from being dependent on customer letters to a system where employees recognize each other based on strategic goals.
- Communication & Technology: Computer use expanded from 60 to 400 machines, and all employees received training in email and web fundamentals.
- Customer Focus: All employees began communicating with customers, and an automated system was created to acknowledge repair requests.
Behavioral and Attitudinal Changes
Participants reported powerful shifts in their interactions. They became more authentic, more willing to give feedback, and better able to collaborate. One coworker noted how they could exchange "not-so-perfect" reports that were still "good enough," overcoming a shared tendency toward perfectionism that had previously hindered progress. These changes, though sometimes subtle, had a powerful impact on relationships and organizational effectiveness. '''