Change
When you have a problem and its unclear where to start or what to do, our review and research can help. Fundamentally, organizations are groups of people working together in a common purpose. Consequently when you are working on difficult issues, it is important to understand the human/group dynamic as well the processes and procedures invloved.
We have spent years studying Organization Culture and our process Revealing Organizational Culture (developed in partnership with Denice Hinden of Managance Consulting and Paul Strum) is a critical component of most organization reviews. We also have deep research expertise from developing surveys and interview protocols to qualitative and quantitative analysis. If you really need to investigate what is happening and WHY, and need on target recommendations for the future. Let us help you.
Our organizational consulting services are customized to meet your need and budget. We don't tell you what you need; we work with you to identify what is really going on and then create appropriate interventions that allow staff to learn and be supported in times of change.
Below we describe our step by step process for working with you.
- Step 1: Mini-Assessment
- Step 2: Design Engagement
- Step 3: The Work
- Step 4: Summary Report and Recommendations
- Step 5: On-going Work or Plan Development
Step 1: Mini-Assessment
We begin by identifying the business issues that you want to address during our work or, stated differently, what is the pressing need for your business, organization, or team. Examples of business issues include:
- A new technology has come on the scene and made it likely your business will need to significantly adapt;
- You’ve lost some of your biggest clients to competitors; why and what do you need to do to respond?
- There is a significant new need or opportunity that your organization could fill, should you?
- Board members are pushing for more efficient practices but it doesn’t ‘feel’ like the right approach to staff.
- You have an intuitive sense that you need to better understand your organization’s culture or strategic opportunities.
Then we deepen our understanding of the issues by completing between 2 to 10 interviews with staff and stakeholders. Depending on the nature of the issue, we may be able to complete this step with a single group interview.
Step 2: Design Engagement
Based on the assessment, we design a specific scope of work including meetings, learning moments, analysis, and reflection. We review (with you) our assessment of the issue and our specific proposals. We may also suggest additional surveys, or tools such as 360 feedback questionnaires, or Myers Briggs assessments, for proposed participants.
Step 3: The Work
This step is where our work with you happens. Whether it is strategic planning, leadership development, creating new strategies, understanding and using your culture, improving communication, creating new structures, we incorporate experiential techniques and often draw on the natural world. Our work with you may include a combination of:
- Meetings and work sessions
- Analysis of work processes, reporting and management metrics, etc.
- Participatory research
- Intentional Learning Moments: new experiences or workshops which create opportunity for deep learning
- Reflective Sessions
No matter what series of actions we take with you. We use:
- adult learning models which focus on both the need to be able to relate experience to current needs and the cyclical nature of learning: experience-reflect-integrate-experiment/experience and so on;
- brain-based research which acknowledges the different ways we receive and process information; and
- organization change models to ensure we are creating the desired results.
Step 4: Summary Report and Recommendations
Each time we complete an Intentional Learning Experience, we produce a summary report based on the insights from our experiences together. This documentation provides a point of reference for the future and includes our specific recommendations for next steps.
Step 5: On-going Work or Plan Development
Depending on what you need, we can provide or work with internal staff to support long term change, create specific follow up action plans, or even hand off results from our work to human resource staff or other consultants.