Institutional Transformation

• Overview
  Excellence, Inc.'s (EXI) approach catalyzes an internally-driven pursuit of a culture of excellence amongst client institutions. The institutional transformation services support management reforms in five fundamental areas: leadership, people, processes, knowledge, and finances. In driving these reforms and pursuing organizational excellence, organizations are coached on how to embrace three pillars of international best practice: that an association or not-for-profit should be (i) member-centered, (ii) results-focused, and (iii) transparent.
  
  EXI's Program facilitates transformation that is led from within each partner institution. The approach contains common elements that apply to all organizations, regardless of their individual missions and responsibilities or existing structures. The focus is on finding ways to best utilize an organization’s existing resources. Moreover, by working with multiple institutions and facilitating collaboration and cross-fertilization of ideas and initiatives, the EXI approach is an extremely valuable tool for leveraging resources and efforts and achieving increased efficiencies. Together, these services are far greater than the sum of their parts in supporting non-governmental organizations.

  
  

• Change Guidance
  Excellence, Inc. assists organizations through a process of designing, implementing, and monitoring improvements in the management disciplines of Leadership, People, Processes, Knowledge, and Finances. Fundamental to success is the creation of an Excellence Team at the client institution, consisting of employees who are guided by Excellence, Inc. specialists. The Excellence Team will identify priorities for change and Excellence, Inc. experts will help manage institutional transformation to achieve the desired results. 
   

• Benchmarking Assessments
  Excellence, Inc. carries out a benchmarking assessment in each of the five management criteria. These assessments are conducted by EXI's technical specialists together with a counterpart Excellence Team member from the client organization. 
  
  The assessment serves multiple purposes, including:

  • gauging the organization against international best practice,
  • identifying the organization’s strengths and weaknesses in a given criteria,
  • training the excellence team members on what the assessor is looking for and why
  • transferring a heightened understanding of the three pillars of international best practice
  Excellence, Inc. regards benchmarking assessments as a valuable gap analysis for the organization seeking to achieve excellence.
  
  Excellence, Inc. will present a confidential gap analysis report to the Excellence Team and the leadership of the organization. This report uses the analysis to identify strengths and weakness of the organization and areas of development, thus addressing areas in need of improvement..
   

• Common Interest Forums
  Excellence, Inc.’s common interest forums bring together Excellence Teams from multiple client institutions on a regular basis to discuss performance improvement ideas.
  
  Common interest forums serve multiple purposes, which include:

  1. providing an arena for the cross-fertilization of ideas across organizations
  2. identifying shared opportunities and constraints
  3. prioritizing common institutional strengthening needs
  4. providing support for reform implementation
  5. serving as a learning environment for best practices
  6. providing a feedback mechanism for decision makers on key areas of macro-level public policy reform
   

• Shared Technical Assistance
  One purpose served by common interest forums in each of the criteria is the identification of shared opportunities and challenges amongst participating institutions. Excellence, Inc. will contract and fund technical assistance that is identified as a priority need of multiple client institutions in one or more criteria. This common approach serves as a valuable means to leverage technical assistance and funding for institutional development.
   

• The Knowledge Base
  Excellence, Inc. maintains an online knowledge base of strategies, best practices, case studies, training materials, templates and other tools to support Excellence Team members in driving internal reforms. The knowledge base will be accessible by clients to facilitate the transformation process.