Our approach to transforming organizations involves stages, each ending with a go/no go decision. If we work through the full cycle with you, we will go through the following steps. However, we are often asked in to do just one or two of the following.

Diagnose: Help you figure out what to do with an enterprise or program/project that is not achieving its objectives.

We start with a “quick look” - a rapid set of meetings with the key players, a review of the key documents, and a walk through of the key environments. We share what we think with your key stakeholders. Based on this, we may jointly decide to dig down deeper in order to formulate an effective strategy for change.

The “quick look” takes anywhere from 2 to 5 days, depending on the situation. Formulating a strategy for change will take longer. But we will tell you what we think it will take and cost before we start.

Staff: Help you find the right person to lead the transformation.

All transformational enterprise change requires coordinated action on the people, process and tooling levels. But often the first and more important step is to change out the current organization leader, and put in place a permanent or contract transformational leader. We know how to find such individuals, and will handle the search for you.  (See our brochure on this service, or go to this page, for more information.)

Lead the transformation ourselves if the situation fits the background and skill set of one of our transformation leaders and the business proposition makes sense both to you and to us.

We have led transformation in the past. We will do it again. But it needs to make business sense for both you and us. When we do it, it is on a part fee / part equity basis.

Coach your internal leader during the transformation.

If you have the right person for the  transformation leader’s job, we will take on the role of transformation coach. To make it work, the inside person needs to be competent in leading change, motivated to making it happen, more capable than the average executive at leading a team, and dedicated to listening to us.

As well, there has to be a reasonable chance that your internal leader’s change plan CAN work, and that the resources needed to make it work are available.

We will tell you if we think these Critical Success Factors are NOT in place. We will not take the coaching assignment unless we believe that they are. We will frame our coaching work using our Executive Performance Contracting process. Sometimes it makes sense to limit our coaching work to the Executive Performance Contracting process for your senior leaders. (See our brochure on this, or go to this page, for more information.)

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We are strong believers in clear, concrete, observable business measures for tracking the progress of a transformation.  In our experience, transformations that do not have such measures are likely to fail.

Insiders often do not have the ability to develop such measures, or report reliably on them. The emotional involvement that they must have with driving the change does not allow them to track their own progress objectively. We can and will do that, keeping everyone in touch with the shifting dynamics that characterize organizational transformation.

We are transformation specialists. We built our expertise through years of executive experience in successful and troubled organizations. We have delivered on strategy, people, organizational change and design, process re-engineering, information systems, and progress measurement consulting assignments to organizations of all sizes. We have been the ones responsible for making it happen. We have given counsel and advice to change leaders during the stress of major organizational change.

We are the right people to partner with you to address your organization’s transformation problem.