At a Glance
COMPANY
A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that serves as the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.
OBJECTIVE
Redesign Marketing Communication (MarComm) operations to improve work transparency, quality & results.
OUTCOME
An established way to track, communicate and collaborate MarComm’s work, increasing quality, credibility and morale.
Challenge
The MarComm team lacked consistent operations by which to effectively manage its work. This impacted their ability to plan strategically, collaborate productively and deliver without dropping balls and overloading team members. Team morale and cross-department trust were both low, creating retention concerns.
The team’s new leader had developed a forward-looking mission and restructured the team but needed an operational solution that would provide structure, align ways of working, provide visibility to the work and improve partnerships with the rest of the organization.
Solution
Step 2: A department structure that aligned with the organization’s, an operational structure and metrics to manage and measure work, new leadership roles to provide strategic ownership, and clarified team responsibilities.
Step 3: MarComm project norms & templates to improve efficiency, quality and communication, defined project kickoffs to improve outcomes, agreement on team tools and usage, and restructured information management to improve collaboration.
Step 4: A Monday.com pilot to provide a single point of entry for work requests and management, a centralized calendar for cross-organization transparency - followed by a Marcomm Monday.com rollout to the organization.
Step 1: A pre-project discovery via confidential team survey and team-lead interviews clarified the breadth of the situation, highest-impact levers and a baseline by which to measure progress. A change management plan to define and guide the multi-phased project.
Step 5: A MarComm Operations Guide to communicate Marcomm’s ways of working and a go-forward change management plan to ensure adoption.
Impact
Improved team communication and planning. Unified work management process, consistent work intake questions, a centralized calendar and work management dashboards improved transparency and alignment.
Improved accountability and follow through. Clearly defined and assigned roles resolved confusion and make expectations explicit.
Improved cross-department service. Aligned team structure to company structure and assigned portfolio leads provided a single, aligned point of entry for each partner team’s work requests.
Improved efficiency and effectiveness. Defined and aligned team norms, templates, best practices and tool usage enabled more consistent team behavior.
Greater insights and improved decision-making. Team and project data became dynamically available to support discussions and make better decisions.
Improved morale, team energy and credibility. Less confusion, mistakes and tension within the team and improved operational excellence noticed by partner teams; Marcomm team openness to continual change due to a human-centered, well-managed process.
Michelle quickly assessed a challenging situation and identified root causes within a struggling team. She developed a multi-phased change management plan to transform the team into an operationally effective unit.
One of Michelle's key strengths is her skill in designing and aligning operational and technical solutions. She builds buy-in and trust, navigates sensitive situations with empathy and professionalism which leads to a positive environment conducive to change.
Michelle’s efforts directly contributed to a noticeable improvement in morale and team credibility. I wholeheartedly recommend Michelle to any organization seeking expertise in change management and operational improvement.
Will Villota, Vice President Marketing Communications
What started as a software implementation quickly evolved into a deeper operational design and change management engagement. Michelle is not only highly skilled in her field, but also brings an understanding of people and team dynamics. She quickly identified that our team was facing significant burnout. Rather than push ahead with sweeping changes, she designed a thoughtful, phased approach that made the work feel manageable and sustainable.
Gaby Sazon, Administrative Manager