One of my goals has been to share my learnings with the many friends and family I know who play some role in business and/or sustainability but might not ever pursue an MBA in sustainability. That goal has been on the back burner, but this year I’m starting a weekly ‘bite sized sustainability MBA newsletter. It will be a quick Friday email to share 1 or 2 things I’ve learned this week directly from my classes, and am finding useful in my work. It may include especially interesting readings I’ve been assigned (accessible on the web), concepts, tools or frameworks I’ve been introduced to, or an aha moment from a class or project.
This week, the POP framework:
For Leading Change course, we use the Purpose, Outcomes, Processes framework to set intentions for meetings, group processes, events, large projects, and even for the course itself. Taking even 5 minutes to think through these 3 elements can make any engagement more effective.
Purpose is the overall guiding vision, what is the reason for the meeting, what motivates the project?
Outcomes are similar to objectives, but are described as a future state, rather than a goal. Outcomes asks us to envision: if this project is successful, what concrete changes will have taken place? What will exist that doesn’t exist now?
Process is the how. What steps will we take to reach the defined outcomes? It’s often tempting to define objectives and then assume that ‘working towards the goal’ is the action, but process asks us to define the more specific actions that will result in the outcomes we want.
A couple of quick examples – a POP for the course itself, and a POP in preparation for a meeting with a consulting firm I’ll be working with for my capstone.
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Cory Skuldt 