Managing Culture @ Work: 5 Pieces of Advice – Part 5: Promote!
Last week I had the opportunity to work with the Management Team and Regional Directors of ESAP, the school for Public Administration in Colombia. The entire project, titled V-ESAP (Virtualization ESAP), is dedicated to enhance the academic program with virtual education. Besides the academic component, the project also contains a management component. And as part of the latter, my expertise in culture and collaboration was requested. It goes without saying, bringing virtualization to the workplace is a cultural change project!
Guided by Anna Bon, affiliated with the Centre of International Cooperation at VU University in Amsterdam, we offered the ESAP a tailor-made program. Based on the work of day 1 we developed the training for day 2, the outcome of day 2 was our input for day 3, and so on. During the workshop we facilitated the ESAP management team formulating action plans for issues such as collaboration, work ethics, communication and culture in the organization. Working in teams, the participants unravelled these topics and developed tangible, detailed and straight-from-the-heart work plans. Every now and then we would take a break for ‘Woosh’, a fun energizer I learned from Michiel Nannen. The participants loved it for being active, short and fast. It surely gave them new and positive energy!
On the last day of the workshop each group presented its outcomes and, while doing so, showed commitment and accountability to bring the actions into practice. Most action plans were so concrete that people immediately had to open their agendas and note down a follow-up activity! Also, the participants had the opportunity to present the result of a week of hard work to the Director of ESAP. She was stunned!
All in all, these four days of hard work were very fruitful. The workshop was a great success and I look forward to the follow-up workshop later this year! To get an impression of the week at ESAP, please see the pictures below.
ESAP communicated the following about our workshop (in Spanish).
Are you interested in how Cross Culture Work can support your organizational change program? Email: karen@crossculturework.com, call +507 6598 4132, or visit www.crossculturework.com
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