Prioritization is essential.
When it comes to presidential transition, no matter what your field is, you should know what your agency’s priorities are moving forward into the next administration. The premise here is “how do I continue to promote or protect those priorities based on the continuity or my organization?”
The challenge is keeping organizational priorities validated, relevant, and upfront with a new team that you’re going to have to get on board at the political level. Regardless of where you are in the federal sector, if you’re dealing with a political appointee that’s coming in, that’s the person you have to convince that what you have in place is valid.
However, the considerations don’t stop there. Not only do you need to look at who your stakeholders are (both internally and externally), you need to identify the key influencers of those stakeholders—understanding this bigger picture of who needs to be onboard will be key in making sure everyone is on the same page.
One of the biggest concerns during a presidential transition is an agency’s budget. Leadership must ask itself what it will be able to afford to maintain, and how shifts in resources will affect shifts in priorities and, consequently, shifts in the strategic plan of the overall organization.
Budgets will be pretty much set by October, but the question is will it be approved and passed by Congress, or will you be placed under a Continuing Resolution (CR), which is a real possibility given this election cycle.
Contingency Planning
There is an acronym, VUCA, that addresses the environment as transitions are planned and executed. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity all contribute to the planning environment—how do you operate in that environment. How does a potential change in administration contribute to this environment?
If an agency has priorities that are based on a planned budget, and it finds itself operating under a CR, that agency needs to be prepared for how it will affect what they are trying to accomplish and how it will play into discussions with influencers and stakeholders. Ideally an agency wants to protect what it’s doing at least through the next year for continuity purposes. To do this, they need to start planning now how their priories could shift, and how to justify their most important functions.
Having a plan B is critically important going into this next election. Not every agency will be getting the increases in resources they are hoping for, but being able to communicate that agency priorities have value and relevance will be important in ensuring continued efficacy in the coming years.
For a deeper dive into this topic, join me September 7 at the Government Workforce Conference.
