Preparing for the 20-Mile March
Leadership Advisory Group came onboard in Fall 2015 and their impact was felt right away. KIPP LA initially thought that the LAG engagement was primarily about a better HR technology solution, but as Irene became aware of KIPP LA’s other HR initiatives like teacher career progressions and compensation reform, she advocated for a more comprehensive approach.
“It was really Irene who said all this work needs to be integrated,” explains Sarah Hughes, KIPP LA’s Chief of Staff.
Irene pushed the KIPP LA team: “Your technology system needs to be in support of your business process. If you really want to do career pathways for teachers, how are you thinking about performance management and the competencies that determine how teachers progress? How are you supporting teacher growth and development around these competencies?”
The KIPP LA team could not answer a lot of these questions.
Three things became apparent:
- What began as an 18 month technology implementation morphed into a 3–4 year project to completely transform KIPP LA’s HR and talent practices. “We are now in a 20 mile march with lots of change management,” observes Marcia Aaron, KIPP LA’s Chief Executive Officer.
- The focus shifted from technology to business process redesign. KIPP LA needed to design its ideal HR processes and then select software that supported the new vision
- KIPP LA would begin its transformation with Teacher Career Progressions and a new HR technology solution. Once KIPP LA committed to “doing everything,” sequencing and prioritizing the transformation work became essential.
Project-Managing The 20 Mile March
Marcia Aaron kept responsibility for managing the One Home project as its Executive Sponsor and leaned on Sarah Hughes, her Chief of Staff, as the Deputy Executive Sponsor.
In November 2015, Marcia created the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) Task Force to guide the selection of a new HR software system. The team was interdisciplinary, with representatives from HR, Academics, Finance, IT, and Data. Matthew Peskay, representing IT, was the only cabinet-level executive on the team. Everyone else was director-level because Marcia wanted the team to be “brutally honest” with each other. “The HRIS Task Force felt very prestigious and a major growth opportunity for participants,” said one participant.
Marcia made one of her most important decisions by tapping Annie Blomberg from the HR team and Megan Gaon from the Academics team to co-lead the HRIS task force. Annie joined KIPP LA a year earlier to manage special projects and initiatives for Nicole Scott, the organization’s Chief of Employee Solutions. Megan has 6 years experience in the organization and works with Angella Martinez, KIPP LA’s Chief Academic Officer, on talent. Annie and Megan complement each other well. Both are talented and productive project managers. And together they are able to work across silos and balance the need for systems and compliance with the needs of real people. And Megan has enough history with KIPP LA to identify when a new idea may be in tension with the organization’s culture and values. On the other hand, neither Megan or Annie had much experience in change management. And the ad hoc nature of the team meant Annie and Megan had to work hard to make sure their respective groups, HR and Academics, stayed engaged and bought into the project.
KIPP LA used several meeting structures to manage the project during the initial phase.
- HRIS Task Force: Regular meetings led by Annie Blomberg and Megan Gaon
- Project management: Standing, weekly meeting with Sarah Hughes, Annie Blomberg, and Megan Gaon
- Consultant management: Standing, weekly call with Marcia Aaron, Sarah Hughes and Irene Glass-Ortiz from LAG
Strong internal sponsorship by Marcia Aaron, the combination of the “right” cross-functional team, excellent project management and a clear set of timelines and milestones contributed to One Home’s initial success.
Coming to Grips with Change Management
“LAG kept telling us we needed a change management strategy and I didn’t really understand why. But then I started to understand all the pieces needed to do career progressions well — a new set of educator performance competencies, professional growth opportunities aligned to the competencies, more consistent performance evaluations — and thought, ‘Oh now I see it,’” Marcia explains.
Marcia began messaging the One Home project to the broader organization in an email in January 2015 and proactively discusses the project during teacher lunches and other organizational events.
“Teachers used to ask about pay and pathways and I’d answer when asked, but now I lead off talking about this effort, getting our team ready for a new approach while at the same time letting everyone know it’s not happening tomorrow,” says Marcia.
KIPP LA recruited a group of 11 teachers to be part of a Design Team for another project on teacher compensation and the Design Team continues to be involved in the One Home project, providing critical input and explaining the work to their colleagues.
KIPP LA also expanded LAG’s contract in February 2016 to help develop a formal change management plan so the team could systematically engage the organization through the RFP process and the resulting implementation.
