| Plexus Consulting Group | Success Stories | ||
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Institute of Internal Auditors (Strategic Planning) |
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Situation Established in 1941, The IIA serves more than 70,000 members in internal auditing, governance and internal control, IT audit, education, and security from more than 100 countries. The world's leader in certification, education, research, and technological guidance for the profession, The Institute serves as the profession's watchdog and resource on significant auditing issues around the globe. Presenting important conferences and seminars for professional development, producing leading-edge educational products, certifying qualified auditing professionals, providing quality assurance reviews and benchmarking, and conducting valuable research projects through The IIA Research Foundation are just a few of The Institute's many activities. The IIA also provides internal auditing practitioners, executive management, boards of directors and audit committees with standards, guidance, and information on internal auditing best practices. The IIA has included international affiliates for over 50 years. In this respect, the IIA is a federation of independent affiliates, but its North American members belong directly to IIA, Inc., the parent. The governance of the organization has been dominated by North Americans. However, the organization's membership has evolved from a heavy North American majority to one that is now evenly divided between North America and rest of the world. In accordance with this transition, The IIA retained Plexus Consulting Group to conduct an organizational assessment seeking to "optimize volunteer and staff resources to ensure appropriate support for the global profession while ensuring an integrated local, regional, and international structure that facilitates the provision of exceptional leadership and service for the profession." The objective of this organizational assessment was to provide the organization's leadership with recommendations regarding:  A new governance structure to meet the needs of a global organization. At minimum, this structure was envisioned to include the board of Directors and to provide solutions for issues related to representation, fiscal authority and "day-to-day" management. A regional structure. A revised committee structure. The headquarters' activities to better serve the global membership.Action Plexus Consulting Group assessed the current organizational structure by conducting quantitative and qualitative research. Initially, 400 key constituents were asked to fill out a 5-page survey with questions on The Institute's products and services, the full-time staff, and the organization's ability to serve their professional needs. Consequently, approximately 90 opinion leaders were contacted and interviewed on issues that emerged out of the survey responses. Finally, the survey and opinion leader interview results were fed into nine focus group sessions held in Orlando, Florida, Salzburg, Austria, Montreal and Quebec City, Canada. Overall, 90 IIA members participated in these focus group sessions. The focus group participants were asked, in turn, to respond to the initial research results, as well as, to evaluate the current organization structure and recommend new strategic directions by engaging in mini-strategic planning sessions. The input of the survey respondents, the opinion leader interviewees, and the focus group participants was compiled into a report that was submitted to the organization's Executive Committee along with recommendations for future strategic directions and objectives. Based on the quantitative and qualitative research, the Plexus team recommended two options for the future of the organization: The first option presented the current structure as being fundamentally sound and advised the leadership to make the organization more responsive to current professional needs by increasing the level of activities and services outside North America, continuing to develop membership outside North America, and by including more non-Americans into the international committees and Board of Directors. The second option called for the establishment of a separate, global organization, an entity that would act as an umbrella organization for the individual National Institutes. The formation of this new entity was envisioned to provide a definite value-added on the global level and coordinate and support the implementation of programs on the local level. Three key elements of this second option are listed below: The global entity should be financially self-sustaining and depend more on the sale of products and services than on dues-based revenues. Membership in the Board of Directors should be by National Institute. This is expected to incentivize the creation of more National Institutes and, ultimately, the expansion of The IIA's presence around the globe. However, the votes within the Board of Directors should be weighted to reflect the headcount and financial contributions of its members. Research indicated that such a weighted advantage would be seen and accepted by the membership as being just and fair. It would also incentivize National Institutes to grow their membership and increase their financial commitment to The IIA.The Executive Committee considered the recommendations and in collaboration with the Plexus team prepared white papers addressing the strategic objectives identified by the research. Results The research results, as well as the Plexus recommendations and the Executive Committee white papers were presented to the project's Steering Committee during a strategic planning retreat in September 1999. The purpose of the retreat was for the Steering Committee to construct a plan, subject to IIA board and membership input and approval, for restructuring The Institute to best enable it to serve the needs of the profession. The group unanimously agreed that this goal could be achieved most effectively by creating a new global IIA (option II) and by transitioning the current IIA into a national association of auditors in the United States and, perhaps, in Canada. In more specific terms, the Global IIA would: · Drive the process of overseeing professional standards and revise them so that they continually reflect contemporary internal auditing practices. · Monitor compliance with those standards; manage and promote professional certifications such as Certified Internal AuditorŪ. · Represent the interests of the profession and promote its value before international decision-makers. · Nurture the internal auditing profession and The IIA in less-developed nations. · Facilitate the cross-border sale of the best products and services developed by national associations. As envisioned by participants, a Board of Directors of approximately 20 national-association representatives would govern the autonomous and financially self-sustaining Global IIA. Regional organizations, if they were to exist, would not be part of the Global IIA governance structure. Voting power would be allocated to the directors based on a yet-to-be-calculated formula that will reflect the number of members in their national associations and their relative financial contributions. A smaller executive committee would oversee the staff's day-to-day operations, and an audit committee would assure adherence to good governance practices. The Global IIA board would create a small number of additional committees with the profession's best, most forward-thinking minds. Some committees envisioned by participants include a board of regents; a standards, issues, ethics, and quality committee; a global conferences committee; and a research committee. Ad-hoc committees could be formed for brief durations as needed. Committee members will be reimbursed for some or all of their travel expenses when the Global IIA budget permits. Individual auditors or groups of auditors would be members of the Global IIA through their national associations. Thus, the national associations would act as a communications link between practitioners and the Global organization. The self-sustaining national entities would operate within a framework of professionalism established by Global IIA while utilizing their unique geographic and cultural differences to add value to their members. National associations would co-market products with Global IIA to ensure that auditors worldwide have access to cutting-edge professional education and training. The current IIA Inc. would remain intact and become the national association representing the United States and Canada or the United States alone if Canadian auditors elected to form their own national entity. IIA, Inc. would retain all its tangible assets and be governed by a reconstituted board and executive committee composed solely of North Americans. |
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