CONSULTING/FACILITATION SERVICES

We enter into a collaborative relationship with our clients that enables us to maximize learning, then customize and integrate our work with what is really happening in your organization.

Change Management: Design & Implementation
We ask our clients, "Have you ever had a plan that worked just like you planned it?" The answer is always "No." Clients ask us, "What are the ten steps to change?" We answer, "They don't exist."

Initiating/leading change is paradoxically more simple AND more complex than we tend to make it. Most of us have crafted what we thought was an elegant, if complex, change management plan. By the time we roll out the plan, the organization has moved on.

To support you in effecting change, we enter into a learning contract with you, crafting and launching the first few steps and committing to a process that enables us all to learn as we go. Together, we analyze, examine, evaluate and base your next steps on the results of that analysis. Doesn't that make more sense than planning out the whole thing, then noticing that the organization is miles from where you thought it would be?

Our approach to leading change is about learning how to learn and effectively using a strategic process for change that is sustainable over time.

Team Building
Team Design & Development
Team Leadership

Teams are the Ferraris of the organizational fleet. And like the world of automobiles, you would not expect high performance without careful engineering and testing. It takes more than a group of workers being assigned the title of "team" to function truly as a team.

We think the best thing about teams is that they provide an opportunity for members to share information and create the kind of synergy that makes everyone smarter and the business more profitable.

When teams do not become synergistic, it can be the result of people misbehaving or ineffective leadership. However, our experience is that "people" issues that arise in teams are most often the result of things like unclear goals and expectations and confused roles and responsibilities. We look at both the relationship and design issues.

We can help you design teams from start-up. We can assist in the diagnosis of poorly performing teams and find ways to strengthen and enliven them to high performance. Don't leave your teams to chance.

Coaching
Coaching is a relatively new and extremely effective way for individuals to identify their strengths and behaviors in order to evaluate which ones support their goals and which do not. In coaching, one learns that sometimes we cling to behaviors not necessarily because they are effective but because they are all we know.

A coach is your advocate, someone who can help you experiment with alternative behaviors—ones that will serve you well. A typical coaching session runs about an hour and can be done in person or over the telephone.

Traditionally, coaching has been for executives and top management.Ê Our experience shows that individuals at any level of an organization can benefit greatly from a coaching experience. In most cases, issues such as interpersonal conflicts, work style differences and unclear expectations can be eliminated in 2-3 sessions.

"Plans are worthless, planning is everything."
—Winston Churchill

Our work with clients has shown us that engaging in the process of gap analysis and deriving pages of what needs fixing is both depressing and not helpful. Instead, we ask what's happening that is good, and how do we get more of that?

In this refreshing approach to strategic planning we help you integrate not only sound business practices, but also assist you in reframing the whole notion of strategic planning away from a problem-based model.Ê Instead of focusing on problems, we start with what is working in your organization and use your strengths to build plans and actions.

We engage you in the crafting of an integrative framework for proactively defining who you are and how you want to work together through your purpose, principles, practices and planning activities.

You and those involved in the planning, come away from the experience with more energy enthusiasm and commitment than you thought possible.

Organization Design/Redesign
Dee Hock, founder of VISA, once pointed out that most organization structures have not evolved since they first were established. Many of our organizational problems derive from the structure of our organization, and it is exciting and hopeful to think that if we change the structure by focusing on the work rather than on tradition, we eliminate many problems.

It is possible to:

• Build an organization that supports the rapid, effective and open flow of information so that everyone—employees and management alike—have all the information they need to make good decisions.
• Design an organization that maximizes speed and efficiency and minimizes bottlenecks.
• Craft an organization structure that enables everyone including customers, and suppliers--to contact the right people at the right time for the right issues.

We can help you create such an organization.Ê

Project Launches
A study by the Standish Group reports that 53% of projects will cost 189 percent of their budget estimates. The Accelerated Project Launch (APL) is designed to change that data significantly.

APL is a working meeting that brings together project stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and team members to get clear on the project mission, requirements, schedule, budget, roles and responsibilities and tools, and to make agreements about how members will work together.

In our experience, APL is the fastest, most effective way to ensure the project team's ability to deliver a quality product on time and within budget. As a stakeholder from Lockheed Martin once said, APL is the most valuable thing we have done to ensure project success.

For more information, please contact:
Suzanne Maxwell
Tel (505) 867-3942
suzanne@aboutchanging.com