2.3 Planning for new ways of working
Most people within an organisation are not directly involved with creating the organisational strategy but may be involved in activities and objectives with specific outcomes that are required in order to achieve the organisation’s purpose. Now that you have thought about possible futures, gained an understanding of trends to be aware of and are thinking about your own organisation’s strategy, we focus next on developing your skills for futures planning.
In this course you will be looking at how to approach futures planning for your organisation. When we think of futures planning sometimes it can be approached with a simple question – What might the future look like?
More often you will be looking to solve a particular problem or be focusing on an area/topic where a strategic need has been identified.
As many organisations have permanently moved to hybrid working as we live with COVID-19, it is important to learn from the journey of adapting due the pandemic and draw on the experience to help planning for a future where digital transformation will continue, and sustainability becomes ever more important.
Activity 7 Thinking about a problem you need to solve
Spend some time reflecting on how your organisation has evolved and responded over the last few years, and the lessons that have been learnt.
Then take time to review what your organisation has, or is doing now, in relation to ways of working – has it adopted a hybrid model? What are its digital transformation and sustainability plans?
Consider the following questions then make some notes in the box below:
- How aligned should delivery programmes be to the organisational strategy?
- How will these programmes impact stakeholders (positively and negatively)?
- What capabilities can you draw upon within your organisation to ensure the success of a hybrid working or digital transformation?
- How can you look at the problem through different lens?
Then think about a problem your organisation may need to solve or is already addressing, that you may wish to use and draw on as you work through this course, and consider:
Why does this problem need solving?
If you do not have a problem that needs solving/addressing you can simply consider: What does the future of your organisation look like?
Answer
As you did this activity, you may have found that specific reference to hybrid working is not in your organisational strategy, but that there are initiatives across your organisation that are focusing on specific requirements for hybrid working. This may in part be due to the frequency that organisational strategies are updated, or many of the activities which need to be planned for are in fact fall under business continuity and operating strategy which tend to be captured at a more granular level.
Whereas it is likely that digital transformation and building digital capabilities will be, as the impact of technology has been and will continue to be, a priority for most organisations.