Rediscovering Sports as a Young Adult in Manhattan

I am in my mid-20s, work a 9-5 job, and am bored with life. I went from playing varsity soccer in college and drinking with friends, and now I find myself coming home from work, with nothing to look forward to, and having a beer as I watch whatever ESPN has to show me that night. This is a reality for most mid-20 aged men in NYC. 

About a year ago, I stumbled upon a beautiful turf field on 90th and York, by the name of Asphalt Green. Each night I would walk by, I saw 40-50 men and women competing in adult soccer leagues. I tried to step in and join, but I was told games were organized through GothamSports and ZogSports. 

I signed up immediately and was placed on a free agent team. With ZogSports, you can sign up as a team and play with your friends or join individually and get placed with others who signed up as individuals. In short, I was playing with a team of random men and women. It took us a couple games to build chemistry and rapport, but soon enough, we were in full swing. After losing in shootouts to end our first two seasons, we won 3 straight championships and went from a team that started as free agents to a tight knit team of players, each knowing their role and laughing throughout. 

While playing weekly and winning leagues is enjoyable, our team created a tradition of going to a local bar at the conclusion of each game. We have group chats, celebrate birthdays together, and even watched world cup games at each other’s apartments. 

I would like to take a moment to thank ZogSports and promote adult soccer in Manhattan for not only allowing me to get great exercise and play a game that I love, but also create a social group that I look forward to seeing week to week. 

Understanding Change Management through Key Activities in Transformation

 

Change management is a collection of practices to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations as they are engaged through organizational change. All organizations undergo some level of change over time. Some changes may be small enough, where they only impact a few members of the IT office that manage a certain process, while other changes may impact the way several teams perform day-to-day tasks. Regardless of size, change management practices must be enacted in order to drive the introduction, adoption, and reinforcement of the change to impacted stakeholders. 

Change management capabilities have become critical to the success of organizational change/transformation. So much so, many organizations have invested in internal transformation offices that specialize in change management skills and help the organization manage large scale changes. Other organizations choose to bring change management consulting in to manage changes or support the transformation office depending on the complexity of change. Below are some of the key change management deliverables and activities which are consistent across most mid- to large- scale transformations. 

Case for Change – This deliverable is critical at the early stages of a change as it is important to have a set of materials that clearly detail why a specific change is happening as well as the key benefits of the change for different audiences. This deliverable is the all-important elevator pitch for change that will be leveraged by the change team as they engage with stakeholders, change agents, and drive buy-in across the organization. 

Stakeholder Analysis – Start by brainstorming and working with the program team to identify all possible stakeholders and impacted parties associated with the change. Once stakeholder groups have been identified, group and prioritize stakeholders on specific criteria (ex. level of engagement, significance, seniority, etc.). This analysis will be critical to other deliverables and strategy associated with the change. 

Change Impact Analysis – This tool serves as the backbone of the change effort as it identifies potential consequences, risks, and impacts specific to different stakeholder groups as a result of change. Change impacts can be determined through interviews, focus groups, surveys, as well as an overall understanding of organizational processes. This tool will inform how the change/program team approaches different stakeholder groups.

Communication/Engagement Strategy – While communication with stakeholders and project sponsors will begin at the initial stages of engagement with the client, the change impacts and stakeholder analysis will be critical to a stakeholder tailored communication plan. In any change effort, some stakeholders will require additional communication and engagement to ensure they feel supported with the right adoption information. 

Training and Reinforcement Planning – Mid- to large-scale changes typically require some degree of training to end users as processes change and new behaviors must be adopted. In some cases, training teams will be brought on if they specialize in a specific tool or technology, however, if changes are focused on process or behavior, the change team will often lead this effort. Activities such as training sessions and focus groups are common, and will be accompanied by training videos, user guides, and instructor-led office hours. Change planning does not end at go-live, instead the right level adoption and reinforcement activities must be planned for well-past go-live.