Consulting

Organizational Development Consulting

While conversation is the operating system for an organization, it may not always be the case that systems and processes within a company line up to support the practice of creating productive energy person-to-person and team-to-team.  Our partners at ODScore® provide a wealth of experience, tools and methods for aligning key processes and work practices in your organization with your desired culture.

We work with you in the areas of:

Discovery. We always start with trying to understand the environment and the mitigating factors that are influencing the results of an organization. People tell us that what sets us apart is our keen curiosity and our willingness to customize our approach based on data we discover. We will review any and all data that could prove pertinent to giving us insight as well as interviewing the key stakeholders to clearly see and feel their reality.

Building Context and Buy-in.  During the interview process we ensure that people have an opportunity to share their experience, successes, insights, fears and concerns, as well as ask us questions. This process is instrumental in informing our approach, building trust with the participants and helps us “see” the context of how the data we have gathered plays out in the respective environment. From all the input we then present any themes that have emerged, identify possible solutions and seek buy in from the key stakeholders.

Creating Strong Relationships and Trust. Organizations in the past have asked us why we would choose to invest time and energy to build trust and relationships upfront. The answer is simple – experience. The success of any work that will be done is dependent on the individuals feeling that this is being done with them not to them. We also know from experience that changing behaviour is a challenging task for most people and that seldom happens without the participants feeling understood (particularly senior team members).  People seldom change without feeling understood first.

Driving Relevance and Commitment. We also want to create conviction and commitment during this phase, that this investment of their time and energy will indeed improve their outcomes in some way. Failure to demonstrate applicability and relevance leads to people nodding their head in agreement but failing to apply the learning in any meaningful way. We know that people will tolerate your conclusions and act on their own.

Results and Measurement Focus. Once we have agreement, we focus our energies on identifying clear indicators to measure our progress, design or customize existing materials, craft appropriate measurement tools and create an appropriate number of interventions designed with an eye to strong application back on the job. We believe that to get training to stick one must help individuals contextualize the content. We do this by using the training to solve some of their real world issues and practising in ever increasing degrees of difficulty until people feel confident they can utilize the skills they have acquired.