RELATED SERVICES

 

In addition to our work in training and publications, we offer the following services:

  • Strategic Counsel and Execution
  • Crisis Mediation and Intervention
  • Team and Culture Building
  • Executive Mentorship
  • Corporate Retreats

Strategic Counsel and Execution

We have provided strategic counsel to over 600 organizations in both the public and private sectors. Our clients have ranged from government ministries, the military, municipalities, school boards and hospitals to multinational organizations, professional services firms and small entrepreneurially driven companies.

We have shown these clients how to simplify complex problems, design new business models and growth strategies, ensure their senior management team is equipped to respond to the dictates of the new/innovation economy, and engage their employees in building high performance cultures.

We conduct operational/performance reviews and audits of corporate governance. Our recommendations for instituting best practices, ensuring stakeholder accountability and streamlining decision making are highly regarded. We typically focus on issues of organizational effectiveness, ranging from restructuring and executive alignment to facilitating conflict management and developing protocols for less stressful working conditions and more productive outcomes. 

We are fully conversant with the global challenges and paradoxes confronting the 21st century enterprise. We understand the forces that will shape the future as well as the age-old problems every business must address, whether these be increasing competition, diminishing resources, rapidly advancing technologies, cyclical economic pressures, changing consumer preferences or the need to empower employees to lead rather than follow.

If you don’t think we know what we’re talking about, a no-obligation phone call or e-mail will give you the answer pretty quickly.

Crisis Mediation and Intervention

We have been selected by numerous clients, sometimes on a competitive basis, to serve in the capacity of mediator, public-sector conciliator, facilitator, intervenor, fact-finder and lead investigator. The work we especially enjoy is as “third party of last resort.”

Our training staff have designed and conducted advanced mediation and facilitation skills training programs for organizations whose sole purpose is achieving consensus among parties in dispute. Our experience ranges from mediating collective bargaining agreements to disputes in the health care field involving physicians and administrators.
We bring a proprietary methodology to bear on the resolution of conflict and assure complete confidentiality.

Team and Culture Building

We offer a variety of services to address the often contentious, time consuming and expensive issues of initiating organizational culture shifts and building high performance teams. These range from proven and custom-designed tools for conducting culture audits and instituting dispute resolution mechanisms to exercises for nurturing innovation, accountability and higher levels of productivity.

Our reality-tested techniques apply to organizational challenges ranging from accurately diagnosing organizational trust issues and aligning management teams to reducing workplace stress and conflicts within individual departments or larger organizational units.

Executive Mentorship

On a highly selective and limited basis, from time to time we will undertake mentoring or advisory roles with senior executives (CEO, CFO, COO).  Our primary function is not that of a typical “coach.” Rather we prefer acting as a strategic sounding board with a view to developing alternative approaches and tactics. Implicit in such engagements occasionally can be an instructional component aimed at enhancing leadership capabilities through independent learning.

Corporate Retreats

Properly designed and facilitated, retreats enable leaders to learn new things – about their business, the competitive environment, the exponentially changing future and, perhaps most important, about each other – and to make new plans to more expertly and confidently go forward. 

Retreats are not “business as usual” meetings. They have a different set of norms, enabling people the chance to interact in ways that may be difficult or impossible back home. The are an opportunity to resolve the really tough questions in a safe environment with the guidance needed to make that possible.

Before you can jump forward with new energy, resolve and direction, you have to step back and “double clutch.” This process requires a rare opportunity for thoughtful contemplation, realistic appraisal, robust discussion and respectful disagreement in search of new and different ways of thinking. Above all, this process demands proven guidance, design and facilitation.

We have designed and led hundreds of corporate and senior executive team retreats of one to four days’ duration. Whether the objective is to envision a new strategic direction, reconfigure resources, operationalize values, streamline decision making, foster innovative thinking, resolve governance issues, adopt best practices, or build more resilient, high performance teams, our retreat designs offer more than just good facilitation. They also provide knowledge, insight and tools.

Our retreat design addresses action planning and accountability. Without it, retreats are an expensive investment with little lasting return. We help you to focus on the real problems facing the business and demonstrate how practical solutions can be generated in an upbeat, non-threatening environment.

Given the time and expense of corporate retreats these days, you owe it to your organization to do it right.