Routefinders: what we learnt from the process
This blog is about what CAST DDC team members have learnt from helping organisations through their routefinding process.
Routefinding is a process that organisations on the DDC programme have been doing. A ‘Routefinder’ is a document they’ve been using to do it. The process and the document is a way for:
- them to get clearer on their needs and priorities
- us to understand their support needs so we can help Deloitte match their volunteers to those needs. Volunteers are mainly at the moment ‘buddies’ to help them with project delivery and mentors to help them learn and think strategically.
“The routefinder is a document that asks you questions. By answering them, you get closer and closer to defining what exactly you want to get out of the programme.” — Luke from Parallel Histories
6 Routefinder learnings
We learnt three main things:
- A few organisations have a clear sense of their needs and the priority area for support — about 15%
- Many organisations had a clear sense of multiple needs but weren’t sure what to prioritise — about 55%
- Some organisations were unclear on their needs and not yet ready to prioritise — about 30%
We also learnt three things about the process of completing the document. It:
- helped some people focus on goals and identify clear deliverables. This has been echoed in this week’s peer group sessions.
- frustrated some who felt it replicated what they had already done and were keen to get on and be matched with needs they felt they had already communicated well enough.
- showed where others were unclear on their needs. In response we’ve given them more support to prioritise and narrow the focus. Some will zoom in further again with a Deloitte volunteer.
Analysis of support needs
We analysed everyone’s Routefinder and categorised every support need we could identify. In doing this we didn’t distinguish what was a priority need and what was secondary (we noted that separately).
So the list below won’t tell you what needs were most important, just which were most prevalent. For example help with social media’ was present four times but not a priority, whereas user research was sometimes a priority need for support, and sometimes secondary.
- User research 22
- Digital strategy and digital maturity assessment 15
- Design thinking 14
- Data and web analytics 9
- CRMs 9
- Prototyping 7
- Digital fundraising 6
- Data management 5
- Website design 5
- Cloud-based solutions 5
- Social media 4
- Data visualisation 4
- Online security 3
- SEO and advertising 2
- Data privacy and IP 1
There were 9 other needs that didn’t fit any of these categories.
What we did after analysing Routefinders
The routefinding process has helped us take three actions:
- prepare a personalised reading list on Notion for each organisation
- work with Deloitte to match each organisation’s digital lead with a mentor and/or buddy from Deloitte’s huge staff team.
- identify and plan what workshops (on particular subjects) might benefit people
What’s happening next
Organisations are being matched and starting work on their projects. They are also attending workshops and reading items from their reading lists.
