Consulting:
Scatterlinks - Organisational Effectiveness Consulting
We offer an array of organisational consulting assistance including:
- Leadership Impact
- Strategic Planning and Implementation
- Organisational Effectiveness
- Facilitation
See below for further details on each:
* Leadership Impact
Our starting point is that leadership is a 'way of being', an action not a title or job description.
In order for leaders to lead effectively, they have to understand what it takes to get people to follow of their own will rather than feeling compelled to do so. We assess the impact leaders have on their subordinates and what that impact has on their subordinates' behaviour and then work together with them to understand the most effective and appropriate styles to make them greater leaders.
We view leadership in the context of an organisation, and see the organisation as a social system. This means that we don’t seek to enhance leadership outside the context in which it is to operate. Nor do we see leadership as the only element in the effectiveness of the organisation – although it is by far the most important. We bring together all the elements in a company to ensure that the leadership styles are aligned and constructive and, most importantly, effective.
Since we believe that by far the greatest influence on culture is leadership, we see leaders as the starting point for constructive cultural alignment.
* Strategic planning and implementation
We believe very strongly that most organisations have most of the data necessary for their own strategic planning. What most companies don’t have is the process to consolidate their knowledge of the environment, markets, internal capabilities and external opportunities into a coherent strategy driven from a compelling vision of the future.
Our starting point in developing any functional strategies (Business Development, Product, HR etc) is to understand precisely what the existing overall business strategies are and what they are trying to achieve.
We do not provide content consulting (although we can help you commission research if we think information is missing – it usually isn’t) but we implement a tried-and-tested process which takes your company’s top team through a series of “gates” to an agreed, implementable and measurable strategy.
In so doing, we involve executives in a co-creation process which ensures a much greater degree of buy-in than had your strategic plans been drawn up by experts with considerably less knowledge of your markets, products, customers, and your own resources, culture, capabilities and processes.
* Organisational Effectiveness
We maintain that organisations habitually and systematically underperform - not against their budgets or targets, but against their potential.
Organisations will only achieve their full potential when there is full and constructive alignment between the purpose of the company and the people who have to deliver. An organisation in which people rally behind the vision and strategy because they want to will, obviously, perform better than organisation in which employees are compelled to follow and are mistrustful or disengaged from the goals of their company.
We believe this underperformance pertains because leaders are unaware and unappreciative of the negative and corrosive effects their current culture is having. And how this undermines any chance of realising both human and organisational potential.
Structure plays an important role in organisational effectiveness. A company organised in a way which does not reflect how works gets done and how its practices and processes support the strategy will struggle to perform. In many cases, formal structures misrepresent and slow down the actual decision making flows. Redundant levels of authority create bottlenecks, inefficiencies, frustration and, ultimately disappointing performance.
So, once again taking the strategy as our starting point, we examine the existing culture and structure, the company's values framework (espoused and actual), the way work gets done and the effectiveness of the structure and hierarchy and examine alternatives. In all, we look at 31 factors effecting culture and assess how effective these are in your organisation, how aligned they are and how they can be strengthened.
Culture is the invisible yet most powerful contributor to an organisation’s performance. Change is constant, and organisations whose culture is ineffective, weak or just plain defensive will consistently fail to respond to change and fail to meet achieve their objectives.
Cultural transformation programmes are longer-term interventions of intense audit, analysis, co-creation and implementation of culture across all levels of your company.
These programmes are undertaken when frustrated business leaders recognise the need for an intervention to create the inflection point for superior engagement and outperformance to take the company to levels the status quo can only dream about.
* Facilitation
Facilitation is not moderation which serves simply to keep members of the same team tearing each others’ throats out.
We provide a professionally-structured facilitation approach which ensures focus and thorough and complete debate through full, equal and constructive participation - gleaning from our learnings and expertise as coaches and previous business leaders. We do not just encourage assumption challenging, but demand it.
The opportunity for good facilitation arises when organisations realise that the big issues are not being dealt with effectively or efficiently. Decisions are just not being made and meetings or workshops are considered by one-and-all to be a colossal waste of time. Reasons for this are numerous and varied. Barriers to constructive group engagement range from poorly constructed agendas, ineffective meeting controls, vested interests, hidden agendas, egos, and dominant (and subservient) personalities or just plain fuzzy thinking and purpose.
Our facilitation approach ensures that context and purpose are properly established, that the rules of engagement are understood (and then become invisible), expectations are managed and there is consensus around direction and outcomes. While the answer to a particular debate may be unknown at the start of an engagement, good facilitation ensures that the group arrives at an one and, more importantly, commits to it.
As facilitators, we are neutral to everything other than the requirement for the meeting to achieve its objectives. We create an environment which is safe and respectful, yet energetic, focused and robust.
Before the session or meeting, we research and understand the issues and expectations to appreciate the barriers and enablers to effective engagement. This includes designing and conducting structured surveys. We ensure that all data necessary to inform the debate(s) is made available before the session in order to avoid discussions based on opinion and speculation. With the company, we design an agenda which is productive and results-oriented. At the session, we actively draw on the skills and experience of each and every member of the group in a challenging yet non-threatening way. And we make absolutely sure that by the time conclusions are reached, that whether there is agreement or not (not everyone can be expected to agree all the time) there is commitment - and commitment to a concrete set of measurable actions.
We provide fully written-up notes and summaries of the debate and conclusions reached and, if required, observations on individual and group dynamics with which companies can work to build constructive and effective behaviours for the future.