Peer-to-Peer Cohort-based Program for Benchmarking Sustainable Purchasing Leadership

Transcription

1 TRAINING PROPOSAL Peer-to-Peer Cohort-based Program for Benchmarking Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Prepared September 2017 Executive Summary offers to provide a cohort-based training and coaching program for up to twenty (20) peer organizations seeking to exercise leadership in sustainable purchasing. The program, which typically spans a period of six (6) months, will: Cost 1. Provide a full-day hands-on training with BENCHMARK, a newly released tool for assessing and enhancing the maturity and leadership of organizations sustainable purchasing programs. This collaborative training experience will be provided for one (1) designated professional from each organization in the cohort of peer organizations. 2. Support the cohort participants with ongoing coaching and resources as they return to their organizations and engage their colleagues in collecting information and assessing their sustainable purchasing program using BENCHMARK. This will include giving the designated professionals participating in the cohort access to all member-only resources during the project, including s Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v2.0, Case Study Library, Online Member Community, webinars (live and recorded), worksheets, and more. 3. Provide an Intermediate Benchmark Report as the cohort participants complete each one of the five sections of BENCHMARK. 4. Host monthly discussion calls during which cohort participants can discuss best practices and other insights surfaced by the intermediate benchmark reports, and help each other with peer-to-peer problem-solving. 5. Publish a final Cohort Benchmark Report that anonymously benchmarks the relative maturity of the organizations sustainable purchasing programs and calls out best practice examples surfaced by the documentation that participants submitted. 6. Facilitate a goal-setting process whereby participants engage the colleagues within their organization in committing to advance the leadership of the sustainable purchasing program in areas that BENCHMARK suggests would be most strategic given their program s current maturity. $30,000 for a cohort of up to 10 organizations. $2,000 per organization after first ten. PROPOSAL : Coaching and Training Program for BENCHMARK 2017 Page 1 of 5

2 Background Over the past three years, has convened a diverse stakeholder community to develop a suite of resources to support leadership in sustainable purchasing, including a set of Principles for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing (2014) and its Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing (2015 v01, 2016 v02). The Principles and Guidance together with an online community, resource center, case study library, and ongoing webinar series define leadership in sustainable purchasing and support purchasing organizations in pursuing leadership. Building on that work, released BENCHMARK SM in BENCHMARK SM is an online platform that enables purchasing organizations to: 1. assess their own sustainable purchasing activities against 's Principles and Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing; and 2. benchmark the maturity of their sustainable purchasing activities against those of other organizations. The current version of BENCHMARK enables purchasing staff to: Enter information about their purchasing program by responding to a structured question set. Invite colleagues to enter information by assigning questions internally. Store submitted responses on a secure server. Benchmark their program against s maturity model for leadership. Benchmark their program against the responses of all other participants. Submit feedback for the further development of future versions. Upload supporting documentation, as appropriate. Benchmark their program against other individual participants programs. Benchmark their program against customized peer groups (e.g., cohort of CA agencies). s Principles, Guidance, and BENCHMARK can be used to foster inter-organization collaboration and friendly peer-to-peer competition. Training and coaching a cohort of professionals in using BENCHMARK will enable organizations, individually and collectively, to fully realize the potential of these tools. Scope of Work The Training & Coaching Program for BENCHMARK will include the following tasks: 1. Support the Engagement of Appropriate Participants will help organizations identify the appropriate level and type of professionals to participate in the cohort. will help the organizations to recruit appropriate professionals to participate in the cohort by providing communications materials and conducting an informational webinar. 2. Provide a Participant Handbook, Training Materials, and other Resources will prepare a Participant Handbook, which provides general information about the BENCHMARK system and the underlying maturity model, as well as detailed information and guidance about each of the topics included in the BENCHMARK question set. All participants will have access to this Handbook as a guidance resource for program optimization. PROPOSAL : Coaching and Training Program for BENCHMARK 2017 Page 2 of 5

3 will prepare training curricula for an in-person kick-off workshop as well as training/coaching plans for cohort dialogues to be conducted by Webex throughout the coaching period. will also give the individuals participating in the cohort access to s member-only resources, including s Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v2.0, Case Study Library, Online Member Community, webinars (live and recorded), worksheets, and more. 3. Conduct Kick-off Workshop will conduct a highly interactive one-day in-person workshop with the participating cohort. The workshop will offer cohort participants the opportunity to: 1) learn about the maturity model for leadership in sustainable purchasing; 2) learn how BENCHMARK can be used to assess and enhance existing sustainable purchasing activities; 3) participate in interactive exercises to connect BENCHMARK with relevant State initiatives; 4) set goals for using BENCHMARK to guide process and performance improvement discussions within their agencies; 5) plan how they would like to collaborate with each other during the three month coaching period. 4. Host an Online Community for the Participating Cohort will create a dedicated online workspace in which the participating cohort may communicate between cohort calls with one another and with staff about their use of BENCHMARK to achieve individual and collective objectives. 5. Coach the Cohort through Six Sequential Calls The Kick-off Workshop will prepare the cohort members with a plan for engaging their colleagues in using the BENCHMARK tool to assess and improve their organization s sustainable purchasing program. As they implement their plan, they will encounter novel challenges and have questions unique to their context. To ensure that these challenges do not become de-motivators and insurmountable obstacles, will provide coaching and training that is responsive to the challenges the cohort members encounter. In addition to answering questions via the online community, the primary method for this coaching will be sequential Webex calls, spaced at a frequency decided by the participants, but not to exceed 7 months in total duration. Each call will focus on addressing challenges associated with one of the five sections of the BENCHMARK question set. In advance of each call, will ask cohort members to report the challenges they are encountering and will prepare training content for the call that is tailored to those challenges. As part of these calls, will also report out on the cohort s collective progress (as measured in the BENCHMARK tool) with Intermediate Benchmark Reports that facilitating peer-to-peer learning and competition. During these calls, cohort participants may also brainstorm about ways to more effectively use BENCHMARK and related resources to advance sustainable purchasing for their organization, and identify unmet needs that should be addressed in future versions of BENCHMARK. The sixth and final cohort call will collect overall feedback on the program and visioning for how the cohort can use their training to promote and support the further use of BENCHMARK, including by setting goals to improve their sustainable purchasing program s performance in strategic areas identified by BENCHMARK. 6. Conduct a Post-Program Review & Produce Final Benchmark Report will solicit feedback from cohort participants via a post-program assessment survey, whose results will be shared with the participants. Additionally, will provide a Cohort Benchmark Report that summarizes the key results and learnings from the benchmarking data submitted, as well as lessons learned throughout the cohort dialogues. PROPOSAL : Coaching and Training Program for BENCHMARK 2017 Page 3 of 5

4 Benefits to Cohort Participants Through participation in the Program, cohort participants will: Understand the key concepts that define leadership in sustainable purchasing; Become expert in using BENCHMARK and other resources to continue to assess and enhance sustainable purchasing activities at the agency and State level; Be prepared to coach and train colleagues in the use of BENCHMARK and other resources; and Establish a network of peers who can act as an ongoing resource for collaboration and leadership after completion of the Program. Alignment with Organizational Needs Organizations in every sector face a shared challenge. They are increasingly asked by executive leadership and/or other internal and external stakeholders to integrate sustainability into their purchasing programs, but they lack a shared language, approach, and management framework for doing so. For some, sustainable purchasing means local economic development, supplier diversity, or fair dealing. For others, sustainable purchasing may mean a commitment to environmental stewardship or resource efficiency. For still others, sustainable purchasing emphasizes workplace safety and workers rights. embraces the full breadth of issues that may be included in sustainable purchasing, and our work to date has started to provide a shared language and approach that integrates these diverse viewpoints. But management of ongoing improvement requires a common framework for measuring success, and this framework will need to be adapted to the unique needs of different types of public and private purchasers. BENCHMARK provides that common framework. Training purchasers in peer organizations on that framework will allow each organization to have a common benchmark against which they can extend their leadership in sustainable purchasing. Sample Timeline Month 1 Set up online community Identify target cohort Participants Conduct informational webinar Finalize workshop logistics (participant RSVPs, room, refreshments, etc) Conduct Kick-off Workshop (full-day, in-person is recommended) Month 2 Collect information to answer Understanding section of BENCHMARK Participants Prepare Intermediate Benchmark Report for Understanding section Conduct Cohort Call #1 (2 hrs) Collect information to answer Commitment section of BENCHMARK Participants Prepare Intermediate Benchmark Report for Commitment section Conduct Cohort Call #2 (2 hrs) Month 3 Collect information to answer Results section of BENCHMARK Participants Prepare Intermediate Benchmark Report for Results section Conduct Cohort Call #3 (2 hrs) PROPOSAL : Coaching and Training Program for BENCHMARK 2017 Page 4 of 5

5 Collect information to answer Innovation section of BENCHMARK Participants Prepare Intermediate Benchmark Report for Innovation section Conduct Cohort Call #4 (2 hrs) Month 4 Collect information to answer Transparency section of BENCHMARK Participants Prepare Intermediate Benchmark Report for Transparency section Conduct Cohort Call #5 (2 hrs) Month 5 Conduct Participant Feedback Survey Submit Final Cohort Benchmark Report Month 6 Conduct Cohort De-Brief & Goal-setting Call (1 hr) Assumptions will secure any required meeting room(s), A/V support, and refreshments. Organizations will have ultimate responsibility for identifying, designating, and motivating their cohort participant. Kick-off workshop will be conducted by two (2) trainers. About The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council is a non-profit organization whose mission is to support and recognize purchasing leadership that accelerates the transition to a prosperous and sustainable future. Founded in 2013, convenes buyers, suppliers, and public interest advocates to develop programs that simplify and standardize sustainable purchasing efforts by large organizations. In just three years, the Council has attracted, from a wide variety of sectors and regions, more than 180 members with over $200 billion in collective purchasing power. In 2016, released Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v2.0, which has been called the most comprehensive literature to date on sustainable purchasing. More than one hundred organizations are now using s Guidance, training videos, and online community of practice to implement strategic sustainable purchasing programs. PROPOSAL : Coaching and Training Program for BENCHMARK 2017 Page 5 of 5