Get Me Jamie Notter: 5. The Power of Truth

Most organizations suffer because their people don’t tell the truth.

This is not about individual integrity. It is about an organization’s internal capacity for allowing truth to be spoken at all levels, and it is important because the avoidance of truth causes a serious drain on productivity. Organizations without broad support for telling the truth tend to suffer from:

Inefficiency (from work-arounds and delays caused by avoidance)
misunderstandings within and across departments/levels
mistakes, waste, and conflict stemming from lack of information
low morale and weak strategy

It is far too easy to find examples of workplace behavior where the truth is avoided. Things like not giving honest feedback. Not confronting the real issues. Only saying things half way. This is the absence of real truth, and it’s not just situational. It seeps into your culture, and it can be quietly devastating. It makes otherwise smart CEOs ineffective. It makes talented teams low performers. It poisons relationships between Board and staff or different departments. Any of this sound familiar?

Unleashing the Power of Truth

It doesn’t have to be that way. If you make some simple changes that focus on getting more truth spoken in your organization, you will see problems like these shrink or disappear. It’s easier said than done, but it is possible. The changes that you will make will be in these four areas:

Walk—the specific behaviors of individuals and teams
Talk—the words and statements of people in authority positions
Structure—the internal processes that inhibit truth telling
Culture—the organizational culture and systems for transparency and learning

Each organization will address these four areas differently. Some changes can happen right away and others may take some time to effect.

Either way, you should start now.

Jamie Notter, Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness at MSP, has developed a simple and focused consulting program that will build capacity for truth and make your organization more effective and powerful. He has been consulting to nonprofits and for-profit corporations for ten years on issues of conflict, trust, teams, and strategy, and he has used that experience to develop a customizable program that offers a range of levels of support to suit your particular needs and accommodate your budget.

Truth Workshop and Roadmap ($3,000)
It starts with a truth workshop—you need to get the right people together to jointly identify the specific areas of walk, talk, structure, and culture where some concentrated effort on expanding truth would help solve problems and build capacity. This is not some “encounter group” where everyone bares their souls. This is a concrete, two-part workshop where you can start taking responsibility—and action—for creating a better place to work.

The workshop is done in two half-day sessions. The first session is primarily educational, getting people thinking and raising awareness of how the lack of truth actually shows up in the organization. The second is more action-oriented, where participants address the issues directly together and begin to develop a roadmap for making change. The roadmap identifies where you’ll change the walk, talk, culture, and structure of the organization in a practical, implementable way. Do that, and you’ll solve problems and get better results.

Implementation Support
Once you have the roadmap, we provide optional implementation support. You decide how integrated Jamie and MSP should be in your capacity building efforts. There are four basic options available, to suit your budget.

Advice ($750 for 3 months)
Phone consultation twice a month and unlimited email addressing questions, concerns or advice on the design and implementation of change efforts based on the roadmap.

Coaching ($1,500 for 3 months, per person)
Structured executive coaching for individuals as a part of the change efforts. This can be with any individual in the system and involves an initial in-person session followed by telephone conversations 2-3 times per month for a minimum of three months.

Training ($2,500 half-day; $3,500 full-day)
Custom educational sessions for specific teams (or the whole staff) in areas like conflict resolution, communication skills, or leadership as part of your capacity building efforts.

Consulting ($5,000 and up)
Facilitated group processes to solve specific problems and effect change in the areas of walk, talk, structure, or culture that have been identified in the road map.

Figuring Out What to Do ($0)
Not sure how to get started? Call to talk through the options and see whether this kind of work makes sense for you and your organization. That is always free of charge.

Jamie Notter - (240) 404-6493