As
the Verification manager I am responsible for making changes to our
verification forms each year and since we are one university these forms have
to be approved by Daytona and Prescott as well as by Worldwide. Last year I was new to this process and when
we decided to meet there were a total of 15 people who reviewed the forms. It was hard to get everyone on the same page
and keep the forms simple and easy to read for the students and parents.
Some
people wanted more items added and others wanted things removed. It seems that no one was on the same page
with how the forms should be done and we went around and around on it for weeks
before we finally made a decision. I
decided that this year I wanted to make it as smooth as possible. It was too much back and forth last year and
I didn’t want to have to deal with that again this year.
Because
there are so many changes this year for the 2013-2014 academic year I wanted to
make sure that I got a head start on the forms and that we would have a smaller
group making the decisions this time to avoid a delay in getting the forms out. I approached my director and manager and
asked them what they thought about me working on the forms ahead of time and
presenting the first draft to a select group of people, mainly managers and then
the directors. They agreed and at the
next status meeting it was brought up that I would be working on the forms to
get a jump on this upcoming year.
I
sent an email out to 5 managers and told them that I would have the forms done
and ready for their review within 24-48 hours and that I wanted their
feedback. I worked on the forms and had
my manager review them before I sent them and got the thumbs up from her. My email explained that the verbiage came
straight from the Department of Education and that the forms were more
streamlined and easy to read. I pointed
out that we needed to get them approved and ready for submission. My last statement was that we were the ones
were going to be making the final decision.
Once we approved the forms and sent them to the directors it was a done
deal.
I
was waiting for there to be resistance from at least some of the managers but
everyone seemed to be on board and happy with the results of the forms. We set up a meeting and everyone was very
happy that the forms were more streamlined and easy to read and
understand. I also had all of the
counselors review the forms since they are the ones on the frontline who deal
with the students on a daily basis so they would be the best ones to see if
there was anything missing that I may have overlooked. Each counselor was able to provide their
input and I used this to finalize the changes I made before they were sent out
to the managers.
Reviewing
the difference between last year and this was that there was no direction last
year and there were too many people involved in the process. By using an explanation on what the steps
were going to be and how we would proceed instead of waiting for someone to
take the lead I found that the forms were greeted with less resistance and everyone
was ready to move forward knowing that the final decision was ours to
make. Everyone was comfortable enough to
bring up any concerns and they were addressed and cleared up.
After
some minor changes were made I sent an email out to the directors and copied
the managers and thanked everyone for their hard work and presented the finalized
forms as a green light to get uploaded for the upcoming academic year. I believe this approach of being prepared
ahead of time and having a set schedule on what we were going to do helped make
this an easy and fast collaboration for all involved. It was a lot of work on my end making sure
that I was doing things right and that the forms were as close to perfect when
I presented them to the managers. Having
a timeline break down of what was due when really helped as well as what was
expected of everyone.
This
was a great lesson for me to see if I could do this from start to finish and
get everyone on the same page between managers and directors without too much
conflict. I feel that this has helped
me with the team project in class as well.
By getting some feedback and getting everyone to understand the steps everyone
is more readily to give their all.
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