Consulting

Change that works.

If you’re responsible for business results in your company, your operational challenges can drive you crazy. Competing silos, underperforming departments, teams paralyzed by conflict, individuals stuck in outdated patterns… You’re busy enough trying to get the work done, but trying to handle the organizational and management misfires on top of that can be too much.

Turns out I’m an expert in organizational and management misfires.

I lead the Consulting division at Management Solutions Plus where I help clients create better organizations. I have a range of options for hiring me to help with your company, described below (and available in this file for sharing):

Position for Success (two options)

Change Assessment Snapshot
Before you jump into the problem solving, it sometimes helps to get a better handle on the nature of the challenges your facing and how they all inter-relate. In this quick assessment we’ll use a brief survey and phone conversations with key staff to develop a clearer picture of what needs to change, at what levels, and in what order. Example: you’ve got turnover or performance numbers that are troubling, and morale seems weak, but you’re not sure how to turn it around. The snapshot will help you make sense of what’s going on before you start to dig into changing things. [survey, phone interviews, report; $3,000]

Change Advisor on Call
Whether or not you’re engaged in a formal change process, you can still have access to Jamie Notter’s insight, analysis, and years of experience guiding organizations through tricky change. Keeping him on call means he can provide email, telephone, and (if you’re in the DC area) ad hoc facilitation support to help you work through the specific challenges you encounter along your change journey. [3 hours per month of phone/email access; $750 per month, or $4,500 for the year]

Fast and Focused Teamwork (two options)

Flash Change Lab
If you’re ready to jump in, this project is designed for a team of people who face a specific operational challenge. It takes them from diagnosing the problem to creating action plans for solving the problem in an intense one-day process. Sometimes it’s really critical that you get the change moving quickly and you need the expertise of a change consultant to get over the hump. Example: A project team’s missing deadlines or chronically letting things fall through the cracks, and people are pointing fingers rather than fixing it. They can use this day to jointly analyze and start solving the problem. [one-day facilitated meeting, action plan; $4,000]

Basic Change Engagement
This is a more extensive change process that focuses on an operational challenge (or set of challenges) for a well-defined team. It takes a group through separate stages of gathering data, jointly analyzing and clarifying problems, and then developing and implementing solutions. Example: a staff or management retreat—not the “go to a resort and relax” retreat, but one where serious issues can be clarified and resolved. The prep work and the follow up enable the one-day retreat to be truly effective. Good for working through deeper conflict issues, it can also be used for a focused strategy conversation or working through process breakdowns. [phone interviews, one-day facilitated retreat, analysis and report, action plan, follow-up; $8,000 to $15,000]

Deep Dives (three options)

Change Landscape Assessment
When operational challenges get messy, complex, and involve multiple functional units, it’s even more important to clarify and prioritize your change strategy. This assessment project starts with a survey and phone interviews, and adds a series of facilitated discussion meetings (that cut across silos) that will lead to a clear strategy. The extended process helps generate the buy-in needed for implementation. Includes a Change Landscape Assessment Report that breaks down the organizational change options into manageable pieces. [$15,000+]

Building Strategic Capacity
An alternative to rigid, traditional strategic planning, this project builds the organization’s capacity to do both strategy and planning in ways that employees will actually use in their job. This engagement typically spans 6–18 months and includes of a customized series of conversations and document creation processes that will produce a clear strategic direction and decision making guide for people at every level. We’ll also build the internal capacity to ensure the strategic conversations and products are continuously refined. [$20,000+]

Culture Change
When a visible and noticeable change to the organization’s culture is needed in less than a year’s time, you need to hit it head on. And that does NOT mean a squishy off-site where you word-smith a new list of value statements and buy some motivational posters. Our culture-change process focuses on shifting the very concrete “walk, talk, and thought” that underlie organizational culture. Then we’ll work with you to outline a change program that will move the needle in those areas. Yes–at some point you’ll think about values. But that work will be clearly integrated with changes in processes and behaviors that will create a new culture. [$30,000+]

There’s lots of room for customization of these options. Contact me to start the conversation.