Your Prescription for a Higher Performing Organization
We increase Organizational Health, Strategy Execution, and Operational Maturity
High Performing Organizations are:
- Healthy – evidenced by cohesive and aligned teams, high morale, and low levels of politics and confusion
- Realizing their Vision – achieving desired results through successful execution of strategy
- Mature – because they are continuously improving their capability to operate effectively
How We Achieve Consistent Organizational Success
“The thing is, continuity of strategic direction and continuous improvement in how you do things are absolutely consistent with each other. In fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.”
Michael Porter
Organizational Health
Are you suffering from:
- Low Accountability
- Silos and Politics
- Lack of Alignment
Results our clients experience:
Highly Productive & Collaborative Teams, High Retention; A Healthy Organization
Executing Strategy
Are you suffering from:
- Stakeholder Scrutiny
- Chasing the Same Goals YoY
- No Time for Strategy
Results our clients experience:
Disciplined Execution, Goals Achieved, Vision Realized
Operational Maturity
Are you suffering from:
- Inconsistency
- Quality Issues
- Operations Don’t Match Growth
Results our clients experience:
Higher Operational Effectiveness, Greater Maturity, Improved productivity, quality, and cost Performance
We include proven solutions, as needed, from these popular brands
Offerings
Rx for Organizational Health
Are you suffering from Low Accountability, Silos, Politics, or Lack of Alignment?
Our Prescription
Cohesion
Having a fully cohesive leadership team in your organization is a foundation. In Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni, five factors are responsible for blocking cohesion. They dysfunction shows up in poor team member relationships, destructive politics, a lack of alignment and accountability, all leading to poor results. Our prescription involves facilitated engagement from outside the team to recognize and address these dysfunctions.
People & Teams
We engage in a coaching style with the team and with individuals as needed. With the use of tools like Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors® we can leverage assessment data to promote understanding and discovery. Our partnership with Wiley also affords your team the use of their digital Catalyst™ tool for ongoing and real-time access to everyone’s profile as well as tips and techniques for managing relationships and improving your team’s culture.
Focus on Shared Results
That’s what every team wants. No silo’s and personal agendas that rise above the shared interests of the team. We have developed core competencies in areas of teamwork that promote greater health and lead to a focus by all team members on your shared goals. Building Trust across a team can be difficult but is foundational to overcoming the other dysfunctions. We leverage __’s Choice to Trust model/framework that sees trust not as an all-or-nothing, but rather a set of addressable domains. As Trust builds, we help teams learn how to debate and disagree with each other in a more constructive manner. The result is a team that makes better decisions and has increased levels of commitment, an therefore accountability.
“The health of an organization provides the context for strategy, finance, marketing, technology, and everything else that happens within it, which is why it is the single greatest factor determining an organization’s success. More than talent. More than knowledge. More than Innovation.”
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Advantage
Rx for Strategy Execution
Are you facing increased scrutiny from your stakeholders? Are you chasing some of the same goals you had last year? Is the day-to-day consuming your capacity to achieve strategic goals? Does the path you’re on lack enough alignment & buy-in by the team?
Our Prescription
Ensuring Focus
There are many reasons the execution of strategy is only successful about 10% of the time.
One of the biggest reasons is Lack of Focus. As an trusted partner, we can test and challenge the quality of your strategic focus in a way that is difficult from within. We think of focus having three dimensions. First is it clearly In Focus; is there absolute Clarity?
Secondly, is it narrowly Focused; is the Scope specific enough or is it trying to solve all problems and capture all opportunities at once? Thirdly, can it afford to Remain In Focus for the entire duration of the strategic period; is focus Sustainable?
Alignment
In a 5-year study of over 300 companies, research at MIT Sloan School of Management found that only 29% of managers could list even 3 of the organization’s 5 strategic priorities. How do you execute something that people don’t even know about, understand, and believe in. We help drive vertical alignment down through all levels of the organization. Even more importantly, we broaden siloed perspectives to drive horizontal alignment across all functional teams; ensuring better awareness, collaboration and cooperation.
The Missing Step
Our experience, and likely yours, is that an organization will define a strategy and then expect to jump directly to execution. Through years of hard lessons learned, we recognized that the Strategy Lifecycle has to pass through an Organizing stage between the envisioning and executing stages. We work with our clients to make sure that an executable plan is established, often utilizing Strategy Maps, Balanced Scorecards, and Strategic Roadmaps. The Organizing step isn’t complete without validating that low-bureaucracy-Governance is established, and needed competence and capacity is allocated to ensure success.
Oversight
Most people in your organization are spending between 80% and 150% of their time on the day-to-day (what FranklinCovey’s 4DX calls the Whirlwind). So it is imperative that the execution of your strategy get help from outside the Whirlwind. Whatever path you’re on, progress must be of your strategy get help from outside the Whirlwind. Whatever path you’re on, progress must be continually monitored and ready for adjustment. The day-to-day has performance expectations that are likely measured and the strategic effort will need its own set of measures represented on visible scoreboards. Change is the one constant, and resources need to be allocated to address changes in everything from priorities, to scope, to resource allocations, to the management of the impact the changes are making to your current people, processes, technology, stakeholders, and even culture.
“In the majority of failures – we estimate 70% – the real problem isn’t bad strategy… It’s bad execution.”
Fortune Magazine, Why CEOs Fail
Rx for Operational Maturity
Is inconsistency hurting performance? Are quality issues hurting your brand? Have you grown, but work is still being performed in older ways?
Our Prescription
The 7th Habit
In his infamous book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey imparts the importance of “sharpening the saw”. We’re often too busy “doing” to worry about how we might “do better”. An intentional act of renewal will help create breakthroughs.
Conquering Complexity
Besides being busy, most organizations are a complex combination of a multitude of interdependent capabilities. We believe it’s a fool’s errand to try to simplify what is inherently complex. However, it is critical to manage the complexity. To do this, we leverage several proven Models and Frameworks, including but not limited to the Baldridge Excellence Framework®, MatureITTM framework, Lean Six Sigma, PMBOK®, and many others as appropriate.
Continuous Improvement Journey
“We can always do better” is an easy statement. But like executing strategy, it’s easy to say, but hard to do. Leveraging the aforementioned models & frameworks, we help our clients implement measurement and management capabilities and help to create a culture of learning and renewal. A subset of key capabilities need to be identified, improved, and embedded into the organization’s Operating Model. Maturity is a journey.
Assess & Re-assess
We start by bringing data to your decision-making and planning process. We remove inaccurate perceptions and biases and create a clear view of your current situation, allowing you to make better decisions.
“A company can seize extraordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.”
Marcel Telles, PE fund founder, majority owners of Anheuser-Busch InBev
