Revive, Reimagine, and Reinvigorate Your Virtual Meetings
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Join us for 120 minutes of focus on how to get people immediately engaged and productive in a virtual meeting. Come learn and experience several Liberating Structures that jumpstart engagement and sharpen focus on a meeting's purpose. You'll take away at least one immediate application for your meetings. This session is designed for those new to LS as well as for those familiar and ready to explore deeper layers.
Liberating Structures are a repertoire of 33+ simple structured group activities that engage participants to dramatically change the way results are generated and advance the work of any group. These approaches promote engagement, inclusion, and collaboration to achieve your meeting purpose and organizational goals. LS can be applied for idea generation, solving challenges, collecting feedback, sense-making, planning, and more.
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Nancy White is a long time Liberating Structures practitioner and one of the early pioneers of online facilitation.
She has developed collaboration, facilitation, communications and planning strategies and solutions for a variety of non-profits, organizations, and businesses. Her clients include AARP, the Nature Conservancy, the World Health Organization, the University of Washington, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Presenter: Nancy White, Owner, Full Circle Associates
When: June 9, 2022, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Nancy will be available for an additional 30 minutes to answer specific questions.
Details: Zoom access information will be provided to registrants prior to event.
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Student Interns Reflect on Experience
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Earlier this month, UVA undergraduate students Erin McIlhinney, a 3rd year Biomedical Engineering major, and Sam Nall, a 4th year Economics and Public Policy major, completed spring semester internships with OE through the Career Center’s Internship Placement Program.
We asked Sam and Erin to share some key insights about their experience in an exit conversation. The OE team was delighted to host Erin and Sam and appreciate their many contributions during the semester.
What are some of your take-aways from your internship experience?
“OE uses an iterative approach on projects and It was eye-opening to see that those techniques could have so many widespread applications.” - Erin
“My first experience with OE was [the holiday] lunch with the team. It was completely casual. Not everything is task-focused.” - Sam
What is something you learned that is applicable and transferrable to your professional career?
“An important skill that I learned is finding connections between data points and then determining themes. I think this type of holistic thinking and connection-building would benefit me in my focus on a career in medicine.” - Erin
“All the excel commands I learned while working on an OE data project was helpful. Also, I realized the importance of prompt communication among the OE team, especially when working remotely.” - Sam
How would you describe Organizational Excellence? What stood out for you about the OE Team?
“OE is a collaborative, problem-solving network. The OE team was so welcoming. Everyone was kind and excited to get us involved.” - Erin
“Open-minded. What stood out for me about the OE team was its horizontal nature. I'm used to hierarchical work environments, but OE members didn't talk down to us. We felt respected.” - Sam
Did anything surprise you about the experience?
“The most surprising thing is how much OE really tried to get us involved in any way and that the team was very flexible with our schedules.” - Erin
“The variety of the work and my ability to contribute it. It was also surprising to see that so much gets done with so few people.” – Sam
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Student Financial Services Service Standards
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As part of a Service Excellence project, Student Financial Services (SFS) developed a set of organization-wide Service Standards. These standards define, clarify, and guide how they deliver exceptional service to students, families, and colleagues.
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In partnership with OE, SFS aligned with the enrollment management vision, considered elements of exceptional service, drew upon their own personal service experiences, and benchmarked other organizations internal and external to UVA to learn about their service standards.
These standards guide both individual actions and process design.
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Learn more detail about each service standard here.
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Provost Grant Supports a Pilot Project to Reduce Discrimination Behaviors
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OE provided support for a project to explore an approach to address discriminatory behavior and bias in the faculty recruitment process and in the promotion and tenure process at the university. The goal of the project was to provide training, learning, and development about how to respond to acts of bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination in the workplace during committee searches. Dr. Karen Johnston in the School of Medicine (SoM) co-led the project with Dr. Greg Townsend, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion in the SoM, and Jann Balmer, Director for Continuing Medical Education in the SoM. Other collaborators and advisors included the Office of the Provost, Equity and Inclusive Excellence, the School of Medicine Deans Office, and the Executive Search Group.
Under a unique arrangement, Becky Sowers, Director of Career Services Operations & Data in the McIntire School of Commerce, dedicated a portion of her time to serve as the project manager, acting on behalf of OE. Becky skillfully led, tracked, and collaborated on work associated with creating case scenarios, video production, training and communication, and pre- and post- assessments. Dr. Johnston expressed gratitude for Becky’s organization, communication, and anticipation of what’s needed next. She stated, “Becky has been such a key member of this team. Our success on this pilot project with such a short timeline would not have been possible without her. She is absolutely outstanding.”
With the pilot training and assessments completed, the research will serve as a baseline and guide future institutional efforts. The project team is grateful to the Provost Office for funding the project.
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Achieve Project Goals with Project Management
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Project Management was key to the success of the Project to Reduce Discrimination Behaviors described above.
Why Project Management?
- To provide common processes for the work, set clear expectations, establish accountability, enable effective decision-making, and therefore reduce unnecessary project delays.
- To control project scope, a common cause of cost and time over-runs.
- To monitor progress, anticipate and manage risks, and effectively deliver the project.
What is Project Management?
- Apply knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.
- Structured approach to facilitate the entire project lifecycle:
1. Initiating
2. Planning
3. Executing
4. Monitoring and Controlling
5. Closing
Access templates and tools here.
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RESOURCES
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