Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Results
In case Center, the overall readiness for change program
implementation appeared to be very poor. Firstly, Center’s program lacked
a shared intent. Although all seemed to agree that the program’s topic was
important and there was a need for change, the program’s role, goals, scope
and content remained unclear. Secondly, the program goals remained at a
too high level and they could not provide the desired guidance for preparing
more detailed plans and defining the scope of the program. The initial goals
were defined as very ambitious and extremely relevant, but the key program
actors were struggling to translate them into more tangible and measurable
objectives. Also, while the basic structure for the program organization had
been sketched, consisting of three sub-programs with responsible
managers, there were visible difficulties in further defining the program
management model and the activities of each sub-program. One expert who
had been involved in one of the three sub-programs described the situation:
Q38 (Center, peripheral program participant): “It keeps bothering me that we
don’t seem to really know where we are with this program. The work approach
has been somewhat loose, concerning both [this sub-program] and the
coordination of this whole entity. It sometimes feels that we don’t keep our feet
on the ground.”
Center’s program also lacked resources, as there were clearly too few
committed people. Illustrating this notion, the interviewees were
nominated by the key program actors as central program participants, but
based on their own accounts, most of them saw themselves as outsiders or
as peripheral participants and did not truly identify with the program.
Many of the interviewees of the second round of interviews were revealed to
be unaware of the program’s status, and they did not seem motivated to
contribute to the program. With the exception of the program manager and
program coordinator, work time was not clearly allocated to the program
activities. The key program actors claimed that the resources for the
program work were too scarce and in no proportion to the ambitious goals
and initial schedules. Practically all of the more peripheral program
participants stated that they were too busy with other duties to get more
actively involved in the program. Many blamed the lack of dedicated
resources for the slow progress of the program. An example of these
accounts is given below.
Q39: (Center, Sub-program manager): “Doing this in addition to other duties,
many other tasks, is a problem in our organization … That’s why these
initiation activities have taken so long. Not until our latest meeting did we agree
on finalizing the sub-program plan. Obviously these things could have been
done much faster.”
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