Monthly Report #24: October 2021

The team ensured continuity of services to the client and its stakeholders until circumstances related to the pandemic warranted a change to this practice. The Change Management (CM) Lead was in discussions with the Lead Management and Program Analyst of the Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) about a possible buy-in to the Task Order. On October 22, 2021, the TCMST made a presentation to the OAA Foreign Operations and Strategy Team on CM and how it could be applied to the implementation of the Acquisition & Assistance (A&A) Strategy. Following the meeting, the TCMST met with the leadership of the Foreign Operations and Strategy Team to discuss a potential future CM engagement. The CM Lead also responded to a suggestion by the recently former Deputy Mission Director for the USAID Mission in the Philippines, in the form of an email introduction to the current Deputy Mission Director for the USAID Mission in the Philippines, to explore potential opportunities for CM support to the Mission and its rapidly expanding programmatic footprint in the region. The TCMST is waiting to confirm a date with the Mission to discuss further details. Through the USAID Collaboration, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) Community of Practice (CoP), the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning’s Office of Learning Evaluation and Research asked for “personal preferences tools” to assess organizational culture and promote self-awareness and collaboration. In response, the TCMST added its contact information and description of its services to the CLA CoP’s Personal Preferences Tools Practitioners tracker. The TCMST continued to meet regularly with the project Activity Manager for the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation (DDI) to share updates regarding current and planned activities with TCMST buy-ins and DDI-wide activities. The team has also been attending the DDI Culture and Change Management Committee’s (CCMC) biweekly meetings. Based on feedback gathered in September, the TCMST submitted a draft guide of best practices on establishing a hybrid working environment on October 29, 2021. This guide provides best practices on how to ensure equity and inclusion for both remote and office-based staff and to optimize collaboration in a hybrid working environment. The TCMST has engaged with the Private Sector Engagement (PSE) Hub and Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) to provide CM workshops and presentations. The team facilitated a CM workshop for the Institutional Capacity Team (ICT) of the PSE Hub on October 13, 2021, with the objectives of providing managers with a conceptual framework to understand how individual employees experience change and providing managers with essential components of a CM plan. The workshop consisted of two parts: an introduction to CM, its relevance to the PSE Policy, and an overview of the ADKAR model, and an interactive session introducing participants to five CM strategies and the associated tools and templates to use for each. Participants were able to start filling the templates, focusing on the implementation of the PSE Competencies Catalog. One key takeaway was the realization that a CM plan should be linked to an overarching CM strategy for the PSE Policy. The TCMST provided a presentation to all staff of the PSE Hub with an overview on CM, the ADKAR Model, and five CM strategies and their applications, using examples from the work of the ICT workshop. In a follow-up survey, one participant commented that the presentation provided “a good overview of a thoughtful and holistic campaign to achieve behavior change.” The TCMST met with the DRG Knowledge Management Specialist on October 20, 2021, to plan and discuss the design of CM trainings for DRG senior leadership and staff involved in implementing DRG’s transition to maintaining records on the Google Drive/Workspace. There are two trainings planned for the following dates: November 10, 2021, and November 16, 2021. The TCMST has been engaging in CM-related activities to implement the PSE strategy and have products that could be included in a CM Plan. CM activities and interventions could be coordinated at the Hub-level in addition to the individual team level. The team has also been working with the PSE Regional Liaison to add the Task Order details to a PSE spreadsheet that lists buy-in mechanisms that are available for missions looking for technical support.