Project Activities
Current & Future Focus Areas
Future State Organizational Design: Organizational design is the process of shaping the structure, roles, reporting lines, and governance that enable the operating model to work in practice. This activity includes: developing design principles to guide how the new organization is structured and how decisions are made, grouping work and responsibilities in a clear, logical way that supports the CSU’s overall goals, defining what the future organization will look like, including leadership structures and reporting relationships, and clarifying who is responsible for what.
Future State Operating Model: An operating model explains how the university’s work gets done across people, processes, technology, and decision-making. It defines how services are delivered, where work happens, and how decisions are made. This activity includes: determining how core services will work and be delivered in the future, identifying the main activities and how teams will work together across the organization, describing how services will be provided, including expectations for quality, speed, and outcomes, and making sure the right systems, tools, and oversight are in place to support this new way of working.
Align New Positions & Governance Structure: Governance and position alignment define how authority and accountability are managed and how new roles fit into the future-state model. Establishing decision rights and governance structures clarifies authority and escalation paths, enabling faster and more transparent decision-making. Aligning new positions with the future-state model ensures clarity in responsibilities and reporting relationships, reducing ambiguity and fostering collaboration. Preparing for the launch of new capabilities and teams through transition planning and communications ensures employees are informed and ready to operate effectively in the new structure.
Completed Activities
Future State Functional Design Sessions: Design Sessions bring together staff from across the university who volunteered or were nominated to share their leadership perspective and/or on-the-ground expertise about a particular function (e.g. Talent Management, or Travel Expenses). These design sessions developed a shared understanding of the HR and Finance work across CSU and builds on the Blueprints developed in Phase 1. Each Design Session explores what work needs to be done and how it might evolve — not who will do it or where it will be done. The goal is to ensure that future-state designs reflect the real work, insights, and needs of CSU employees. (Grants Management work is wrapping up in January 2026).
Building the Baseline: The exercise conducted gathered over 1500 documents and insights from each division and college across CSU. This effort provided insight into differences in roles, processes, and governance across areas. The information highlighted where greater consistency and standardization have potential to improve experiences and services for both staff and customers. These findings also pointed out strengths and opportunities in organizational structure, process alignment, and governance—helping ensure the future state reflects the real needs of the university.
Work Analysis Survey: This individual employee-level survey gathered information about the types of activities employees perform, how their time is distributed, and where there may be opportunities to improve systems, clarify responsibilities, or simplify workflows. The individual responses reveal large-scale patterns such as: Work that may not be formally recognized but consumes time and resources, overlapping activities performed across multiple units, fragmented work where many people spend a little time across several different kinds of activities, areas where processes could be standardized or automated to reduce manual or error-prone tasks.
Blueprints: The Blueprints were developed in Phase 1 as a starting point of documenting the various HR and Finance functions needed in the future state of CSU and how they might be grouped. These initial drafts provided the foundation for the Phase 2 Design Sessions described above.
Current Alignment Assessment: In Phase 1, our consulting partners conducted a preliminary analysis of data and interviews with the university community to understand current state of HR and Finance administrative alignment including strengths and opportunities for improvement. This work provides an initial view into where we need to strengthen and better support critical capabilities for greater consistency across the university, and uncovered insights into decision-making processes and governance to reveal opportunities for efficiency and improved effectiveness.
North Stars and Guiding Principles: In Phase 1, guiding principles for the process and “North Stars” were developed to provide an overarching shared vision for each of HR and Finance informed by best practices and stakeholder input.