“Going Green” is a hot topic on today’s business and political stages. This is because many organizations have realized that green business practices not only help the environment but also provide a competitive business advantage. Beyond that, the U.S. government and many of our 50 states are offering billions of dollars in funding for companies who develop and implement new technologies and processes that will benefit our environment.

This realization, though, can quickly lead to frustration if you are unable to create rapid innovation and organizational support for your green initiatives. When campaigns like “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” come from the top, employees may not pay much attention to them. Oftentimes, they are perceived as executive-sponsored fads that will soon pass. In fact, green initiatives may already be underway at your organization, and you may not even know it! Perhaps they’re moving forward too slowly, or they just keep getting pushed down the priority list due to more pressing issues.

With the current business and sociopolitical environment, organizations have an opportunity to make a real difference in a way that drives increased employee engagement and benefits their triple bottom-line. The key is changing the way we approach how we “go green” and realizing that this transformational change requires a more disciplined strategic approach. Companies like Wal-Mart and General Electric have actually integrated their green initiatives into every aspect of their businesses, and thus they have produced new lines of innovative products and services as well as created boosts to their bottom lines. As Wal-Mart’s former CEO Lee Scott said, “It all comes down to who we are, how we work, and what we stand for as a company.”

Your organization may consider green business practices on several different levels. If you want to completely transform the way you do business, you must start with incorporating sustainable business practices into your company’s overall business strategy.

The first step is to get everyone on the same page. Complex changes like this require tremendous collaboration and coordination, so you need to gather the input and ideas from all of your key stakeholders – from employees and customers to vendors and business partners. Educate them about your vision for a sustainable future and involve them in the process so they feel like they are contributing to the end goal. They will be much more engaged in the process and are more likely to participate in any new initiatives if they participate right from the start.

The second step is to plan from the future instead of from the past. By imagining the organization in a sustainable future, stakeholders have the opportunity to look back to the present to determine what they can do now to create that future vision. This unleashes creativity and drives innovation to see what’s possible if transformational changes occur rather than simply creating incremental change by planning from the past.

The third step is to create an action plan with priorities and accountability to move your organization forward. Your future vision can serve as a motivating guide to implement new business strategies and keep your stakeholders engaged as they contribute to and make a difference not just within your organization but in the world around them.

If your organization is looking to go green on a smaller scale, you can find plenty of opportunities for grassroots movements too. One of our largest clients just did this by realizing how many paper cups were being used in their division alone. As a result, they decided to produce glass cups with their division logo on them and distribute them to everyone in the organization along with a note that said in order to support ongoing sustainability efforts and cost-reduction programs paper cups would no longer be provided to employees. Everyone now uses their glass cups with pride, knowing that they are making a significant contribution to the company and the environment every time they do. Other organizations we work with have placed recycling waste cans in every office, replaced individual plastic water bottles with central water coolers and filters, and instituted telecommuting and compressed work-week schedules for their employees.

The key to successful green initiatives is to design solutions that make sense to both your employees and your business as well as make a difference in your community and the world around you. To find out whether or not your employees and key stakeholders are excited about and ultimately will adopt any proposed initiatives, we recommend conducting mini-surveys before you go too far. Group feedback sessions can also be very useful when testing preliminary ideas – or even designing new programs – with select employees and business leaders.

At Plus Delta, our consultants are passionate about implementing sustainable business practices. If your organization is looking to integrate green initiatives into how you do business, our Positive Change^sm Transformations can provide the right foundation for such an initiative to succeed. Or if we can help your company “go green” by conducting an organizational survey or developing your internal marketing communications campaign, just let us know. You can always reach us at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in July 2009.

Addressing today’s complex business challenges requires team collaboration and group involvement. As the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one.” And with no end in sight with the global economic crisis, you probably need even more heads than that to survive!

At times like these, business objectives are constantly changing. What got your organization here isn’t likely to get your organization where you ultimately want to be. For this reason, business leaders must get on the same page – and stay on the same page – for your organization to reach its intended destination. Individual leaders simply won’t be able to get through these challenges alone. To move towards the future, senior leadership needs to be aligned and work together toward common business goals.

Whether you’re plotting a new strategic course for your organization or working an operational issue that must be resolved, a leadership retreat is the most effective way to do exactly that. The best thinking and decision-making happens when you include many perspectives, so it’s critical to engage others in brainstorming and problem-solving processes to create a competitive advantage.

When convening a leadership retreat, it’s great if you can get away to an offsite location and remove everyone from their everyday work environment. But if your budget doesn’t allow for that, you can just as easily use an onsite conference room too. The key is to create a safe and productive environment for much-needed discussion and group dialogue to occur. It’s also important to dedicate the right amount of time for everyone to be together. An hour-long meeting isn’t going to cut it for the types of challenges organizations face in today’s economic climate. A day might be sufficient, but leaders need ample time together so two days typically provides a stronger foundation for a leadership retreat.

At Plus Delta, we start the retreat process by identifying any specific objectives for the group event. We then customize the retreat design to meet our client’s particular needs. Just like no two people are exactly alike, no two leadership teams are exactly alike. That’s why the retreat must be designed based on the particular business requirements of the organization if it’s going to be successful. The following framework highlights the key steps in our proven approach for designing and facilitating leadership retreats:

• Requirements Gathering – Meet with senior leaders and other participants to assess current business challenges and determine any expectations for the retreat
• Retreat Design – Create the overall framework and detailed agenda for the retreat as well as secure guest speakers and confirm event logistics
• Group Facilitation – Distribute pre-work assignments and engage all retreat participants in an interactive session to discuss and address your key business issues
• Retreat Wrap-Up – Capture the group’s work, debrief the results of the retreat, and confirm very next steps along with individual accountabilities and action plans

When Plus Delta designs and facilitates leadership retreats, we deliver lasting business results that move an organization forward. One of the primary reasons for this is that the group conversations that take place during leadership retreats aren’t always easy. In fact, they often get downright messy! That’s why it’s so vital to have a skilled facilitator present to keep the retreat on track. And that’s exactly what our “Design in Real Time” approach is intended to do – follow the needs of the group in real-time and keep every retreat participant engaged in the discussion. Retreat participants need to be actively involved in designing their destiny, and it’s impossible to play both facilitator and participant roles effectively at the same time. By managing the broader group dynamics and maintaining focus on the desired outcomes for the retreat, we can more effectively create a high-impact experience.

This has never been more evident than with a couple of recent retreats we facilitated. We led multiple sessions with the Board and senior staff members of two merging not-for-profit agencies so they could define their vision for the combined organization as well as develop a go-forward strategic plan. We also facilitated a two-day offsite with the Leadership Team of a multi-national corporation and created an opportunity for these senior leaders to contribute to their organization’s annual goal-setting and action planning process – something they had not done for years! With both these clients, our ability to monitor and then quickly address the evolving needs of these leadership groups in real-time proved invaluable for creating safe environments for dialogue, actively engaging retreat participants in the discussion, and ultimately producing better results.

Can Plus Delta help your leadership team get aligned and be more productive together? To learn more about our approach to designing and facilitating high-impact leadership retreats, give us a call at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Leadership Retreats page of our website for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in May 2009.

At Plus Delta, we like to think of feedback more like “feed-forward.” You’ve seen the concept of “pay it forward” in movies and commercials over the years, and feedback can have the same effect. When offered with the right intention and skills, feedback can be a gift you give to others not to move them backwards but instead to move them forwards towards the achievement of their individual pursuits.

Feedback provides information about a particular action or behavior at a specific point in time. When performance is low, feedback can help others with the corrective actions they need to take to improve. When performance is good, feedback can reinforce positive and effective behaviors to ensure continued success in the future.

Feedback is important because it provides guideposts for others to stay on course. It also lets them know how they’re doing as well as when they may need to course correct. When someone doesn’t receive feedback, they can stray pretty far off course and that can make it very difficult for them to get back on track. Sometimes, managers may avoid giving feedback because they don’t want to deliver “negative feedback,” but what they don’t understand is there’s no such thing! When delivered skillfully, all feedback is constructive and helpful for those you are trying to help. Here are some strategies you can use to give feedback that feels like “feed forward” and isn’t at all threatening.

When delivering feedback, consider the following questions:

• Is it timely? It should be close to the time of the incident. However, you should consider the environment, context and receptivity of the receiver.
• Is it factual? Start with an observation instead of a conclusion or interpretation.
• Is it specific? Address specific situations and provide examples. Don’t just say, “Good job.”
• Is it genuine and authentic? Make sure you’re not just going through the motions. They can tell when it’s not sincere!
• Is it proportional to the behavior? Be careful not to go over the top with insignificant actions. Save your stronger feedback for when it really matters.
• Is it the right delivery method? Consider whether it’s accusatory or in front of others. Also, be aware of your tone and body language.

The STAR model below provides a great framework for structuring your feedback conversation:

• ST = Situation/Task – Describe the situation or task you observed
• A = Action – Describe the actions taken by the employee
• R = Result – Describe the result of those actions

And if you need to offer constructive feedback to correct someone’s behavior, share the following alternative actions and results too:

• A = Alternative Action – Describe the actions the employee should have taken and can now take in the future
• R = Alternative Result – Describe the result that the alternative actions would have created and will now create in the future

If you don’t have time for a full discussion about the situation or incident, you can also use the Short-Cut method for giving feedback. Just be specific and describe exactly what you saw. Then, quickly highlight the result or impact created by those actions and/or the alternative result or impact that can be created in the future if different actions are taken.

So this year, we recommend you add one more New Year’s resolution to your list of priorities. Schedule one feedback session per week with one of your peers or direct reports. Add these appointments to your calendar as recurring events so you don’t forget to prioritize them. This will keep you and your team on track to meet – and maybe even exceed – your goals for the rest of the year.

Can Plus Delta help you create a “feed-forward” culture to improve performance in your organization? To learn about our core services in this area, give us a call at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. We look forward to serving your every need!

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in Febuary 2009.

How many times have you said to yourself, “I know we could be even better…” but not known what to do to achieve those results? The problem for most people isn’t recognizing that there is a better way to do things. It’s figuring out exactly what to do and moving from “even better” to “even better if…”!

We’re currently in the midst of tremendous uncertainty and economic turmoil throughout the country and around the world. As a result, companies are under even more pressure than usual to streamline operations and improve organizational performance. At times like this, traditional approaches to organizational change won’t deliver the kinds of transformational results anyone wants – or needs – to achieve their intended results.

For example, you might see an opportunity for improvement in one particular area of the business and leverage your core strengths to change the way that work group functions. Or maybe you do some external benchmarking and decide to implement an industry “best practice” approach with that work group. These changes may help for awhile, but they probably won’t have the lasting impact you want them to have. More importantly, these changes are likely to create new problems in other areas of the business.

Why is that? Why does a change in one group cause problems somewhere else in the organization? Well, imagine a high-performance bicycle wheel with four spokes. The spokes of the wheel represent your company’s strategy, processes, systems and people. Now imagine that you change one of the spokes to be bigger or longer than the other three in an attempt to make that one spoke “even better”. How well will that wheel roll now that one of the spokes has improved strength and durability?

Each of these key elements in your organization is related to each other. That means when you change one thing in isolation, you impact everything else. Each part of the organization, including its divisions, departments, functions, and work groups are sub-systems within the overall company. Therefore, changes in one area of the business have significant implications for other areas too.

This common approach to implement organizational changes in isolation is a major reason why as little as 20% of all large-scale change efforts achieve their intended business results. To be effective, we need a more integrated approach. If we don’t look at our organizations as complete systems, we may achieve incremental gains in certain areas, but we surely won’t be effective in creating sustainable change across the entire organization.

At Plus Delta Consulting, we have shown numerous business leaders the systematic steps to take to realign their efforts and increase their team’s effectiveness. Rather than take a myopic view of any organization, we use a more integrated approach and focus our efforts on all four of the following performance factors that are critical to the success of creating sustainable change across an organization:

• Business Strategy – An organization’s business strategy clearly articulates the vision and longer-term objectives for that organization.
• Operating Processes – Defined business processes operationalize the strategic direction within separate but complementary work functions. If the strategy dictates “what” an organization will do, these processes demonstrate “how” they will get there.
• Technology Systems – Whether they are manual or leverage more advanced technologies, an organization’s operating systems enable the tactical execution of their core business processes to occur.
• People & Culture – Last but not least, people use the established systems to perform the actual process tasks that help the organization achieve its key business objectives.

When we use this integrated approach with our clients, we typically start with a Quick Pulse assessment to quickly determine what’s working well as well as what may need to be changed within each performance area. Through this disciplined diagnostic approach, we conduct executive interviews, facilitate employee feedback sessions, perform high-level process analyses, and oftentimes administer an organizational climate survey to get a full picture of the organization’s strategy, process, systems and people. We then use this information to make specific recommendations to improve performance and prepare a suggested roadmap for change.

At the end of this process, our goal is for our clients to complete the statement, “We would be even better if…” As we said before, most people know there is a better way. They just don’t know exactly what to do. So we partner with our clients to prioritize any number of possible actions and then implement those changes to get the organization to the next level. And our commitment is to complete the initial Quick Pulse assessment in 30 days or less so that they can more quickly take that next step towards achieving their intended results.

Can Plus Delta help you create sustainable changes and produce “even better” results? To learn more about our integrated change approach, give us a call at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Quick Pulse page of our website for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in November 2008.

Whether your organization is large or small, strategic planning is critical to the success of your business. Even individual departments must create their own strategic plans to drive sustained business results. Whatever our size or scope, we need to plan where we’re going and how we plan to get there in order to achieve our objectives. Otherwise, we run the risk of never reaching our intended destination!

In our experience, there are two ways to develop a strategic plan. The first approach plans from the past by reviewing where we’ve been and deciding where we want to go in the future. This more traditional approach leverages our current strengths and perceived market opportunities to get there. A second and more effective approach, in our experience, jumps forward to some point in the not-too-distant future and focuses on the possibilities that could occur instead. From there, we simply need to work backwards from this ideal state to determine how best to make it happen.

At Plus Delta, we have used – and seen the benefits of – both methods; however, we prefer to focus on envisioning our client’s possible future irrespective of its past and then plan from the future rather than from a place of prediction based on historical events. This model of starting backwards from a place of what’s possible enables powerful “out of the box” thinking rather than constraining an organization to where it has already been. Planning from the future also creates opportunities for being creative, dreaming big, and innovating in a way that can take an organization to even greater heights of success. But before you go off and simply create your strategic plan, make sure to take into account a much broader perspective.

Throughout the strategic planning process, it is essential to enlist the support of all your key stakeholders from across – and outside – your organization. Take into consideration the perspectives of your business owners, senior leaders, employees, customers, and other groups outside of the organization. Each of these groups may have unique views about your organization’s vision and should be engaged in the strategic planning process.

Next, establish a few guideposts – your vision, mission, and values – to lay the foundation for your strategic plan. Your vision describes the benefit your organization provides – your end goal or final accomplishment. Typically, a vision is an object of your imagination and creativity and therefore may be unattainable. Your mission describes what your organization must do to achieve the vision. And your values establish clear boundaries of behavior for pursuing your vision. For example, some of Plus Delta’s values are Quality, Respect, Client Satisfaction, and Personal Fulfillment. One could argue that these aren’t required for our continued success, but this is how we choose to operate as we pursue our vision.

After your guideposts are in place, you must establish intermediary strategic targets throughout the planning horizon (e.g., 10 years, 5 years, 2 years). These sub-goals provide the basis for developing an action plan and are intended to move your organization towards achieving your vision. To be successful though, you will also need to develop a more specific Year One action plan with quarterly and monthly goals to operationalize the strategic plan. Without establishing these clear accountabilities for those who must perform the strategic work, your strategic plan is likely to end up on a shelf and be forgotten.

Once you develop both your strategic plan and the shorter-term action plan, be sure to conduct regular project status and review sesssions with the strategic planning team to measure your progress against plan and monitor the results of your ongoing work. This discipline will keep your implementation efforts on track. It also provides excellent opportunities to make any necessary adjustments along the way as your business and/or market environment changes. Together, this process of continuous evaluation and plan refinement will keep the team moving forward and bring your organization closer and closer to achieving your vision for the future.

Can Plus Delta help you identify your possible future and create a strategic plan for success? To learn more about our unique planning from the future approach, give us a call at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Strategic Planning page of our website for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in September 2008.

An effective organization design can make or break your ability to achieve your business strategy. This is particularly true in today’s ever-changing environment.

As a result, Plus Delta has seen a growing need for our clients to redesign their organizations to better align them with their marketplaces. So we thought it would be helpful for us to share some of our observations and experiences about planning and implementing organizational redesigns with you along with some important tips to consider throughout the process.

As we look at the landscape of our clients, we see several trends emerging. Larger organizations focused on market demand and market opportunity are designing their strategies to give them better market share and increased growth. At the same time, many mid-sized companies are trying to build new business functions that they know are needed to respond to specific opportunities, but they often don’t know how to implement them on their own. And smaller high-growth organizations are moving from their original founder/single-owner structure to the next level and need to instill new leadership and infrastructure to make that next step.

No matter what their size or reason, leaders want to achieve greater success and provide enhanced value to their customers and key stakeholders. So when it comes to creating a new organization design, the development of the organization’s strategy must start with these very customers and stakeholders.

A successful business strategy is created by comparing current business results with the customers’ or stakeholders’ future needs. Once we define the proper strategy, we can then use it to design an effective organization structure that will enable the strategy’s achievement in a way that is still aligned with the organization’s culture.

When performing an organization redesign, we always establish a “Design Team” who can help conduct the needs assessment, develop a draft of the future-state design, and ultimately drive the implementation process. When considering the composition of the Design Team, we often include two or three members of the senior leadership team as well as one or two of the most important mid-level managers who are well-experienced in the business. This team also needs an Executive Champion to sponsor the effort. The champion’s role is to keep the team on course to achieve the organization’s objectives. It helps to have an external facilitator and change advisor involved who is familiar with the design process as well. When we play this part, Plus Delta’s responsibility is to provide our unique perspectives as outsiders because we can more easily remain unbiased to the organizational culture and politics and therefore can provide better “out of the box” thinking on various design options.

To avoid creating the design in a vacuum, we typically use an iterative, dynamic process to help the Design Team conduct their work over a series of sessions. The process starts with an assessment of the organization’s current capabilities. This includes everything from work processes to business systems to the individual people and their skills – anything that can provide a competitive advantage. The following are just some of the questions the Design Team needs to ask themselves and others across the organization as part of the assessment process.

 

• Is our current organization structure aligned with our stated business strategy? Is it focused on meeting our customers’ needs?
• Do we have any process steps that no longer add value to the organization given our emerging business strategy?
• Are there redundancies or gaps in our current processes and/or procedures that may provide opportunities for improvement?
• Does our organization have the ability to innovate? Can we adapt to changing market conditions?

Once this assessment is complete, we then consider various design options for the organization’s structure. The important thing to keep in mind during this process is that no one organization design works for every organization. We also review the assessment results and balance the execution of the strategy and its related tasks with the potential impact on the people and culture within the organization. Our goal here is to align the structure with the related work processes so they support each other and help the organization achieve its intended results.

When the design is “complete,” the Design Team needs to shop it around with a number of senior leaders and other key stakeholders across the organization. The next step in the redesign process is going to be implementation, so it is critical to gain everyone’s buy-in early on rather than wait until later in the process. Once the early drafts of the design have been reviewed, refined, and validated, it’s time to implement. And this is the most critical step in the redesign process because we now need to create a transition strategy that helps employees understand the new organization and potentially new ways of working. At the same time, we also want to make sure our customers and key stakeholders understand our reasons and expected outcomes for the new design.

Within the organization, our transition strategy starts with gaining executive support for the new design and making sure that senior leadership fully understands the structure and the reasons for the change. Next, we engage employees in the process by communicating the expected changes to them as well as the reasons for them. We need to help anyone who may be resistant to the change too by guiding and supporting them through the change process in order to create long-lasting, sustainable change.

Finally, we work with our clients to put measurements into place to evaluate the effectiveness of the new design over time and make any necessary improvements. A continuous improvement plan such as this is critical to the long-term success of our redesign efforts. Remember, organizations need to be built to change, not built to remain the same.

Can Plus Delta help you design a more effective organization to enhance your future business results? To learn more about our methodology and approach in this area, please call us at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Organization Design page of our website for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in July 2008.

Are you tired of being good at what you do? Do you have what it takes to be great? At Plus Delta Consulting, we’re not only confident – we’re convinced – that you do!

At the OD Network conference in Baltimore this year, we had the distinct pleasure of demonstrating the fundamental truth underlying this belief to a group of seasoned OD consultants. This group of talented individuals attended a pre-conference workshop we facilitated called “Launching, Running and GROWING a Successful OD Consulting Practice”. During this all-day session, we showed these consultants that anything is possible with a few foundational building blocks for success. We actually used a very simple metaphor throughout the day to help these consultants recognize that they had exactly what it takes to be not just good but great in their ongoing efforts to establish successful independent and boutique consultancies. The metaphor we used was loosely tied to Hasbro’s philosophy about Play-Doh which is “what’s in the can is just the beginning…” (see www.hasbro.com/playdoh)

For more than 60 years, Play-Doh products have offered dozens of fun ways for children to play and learn. Wikki Stix (see www.wikkistix.com), although undoubtedly less popular in our schools, organizations, and local communities, is another great toy and educational tool for children. Wikki Stix, like Play-Doh only made out of wax instead of dough, offers a twistable, buildable, malleable, playable one-of-a-kind tool set for bringing creativity to life. Together, these two products confirm that you can create just about anything – including greatness – if you have the insight and passion for what is possible.

During the course of the one-day workshop, we helped these professionals envision their possible futures as external consultants. We also reviewed many steps required to launch a consulting practice and discussed several effective techniques that we have used at Plus Delta to run our successful firm. We even worked with these consultants to develop growth strategies for them to establish greater market presence and achieve enduring success moving forward. At the end of the day though, what they created with Play-Doh and Wikki Stix (vibrant flowers, smiling faces, and towering structures, to name a few of the group’s creations) may have been more educational and informative than any of the learning materials we shared throughout the workshop. These symbolic figures were created from their own creative energies and ideas, and for that very reason powerfully reinforced our true message for the day.

Greatness lies within each and every one of us. Some of us may think good is good enough, and that’s fine. We won’t argue that good is not good. Good provides lots of unique and fulfilling opportunities in life. At the same time, we want to suggest that good may not always be good enough. And if you have what it takes to be great, why settle for anything less?

With a few foundational building blocks for success, like Play-Doh and Wikki Stix, you can create just about anything you put your mind to. Whether that’s bringing a new innovative product to market professionally or coaching your child’s sports team to win the championships in your personal life, anything is possible as long as you and those around you have passion for what you do and the general wherewithal to do what it takes to get the job done. This holiday season, we encourage you to take some time figuring out how you can be great. Then, take a little more time to set clear goals for achieving greatness in the year(s) ahead. This proactive process might just be the difference you need to lead an even happier, more fulfilling life and make an even bigger difference in the world around you.

Can Plus Delta help you achieve your vision for achieving greatness? To learn how to enhance your current work efforts, call us at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to support@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Resource Center of our website for several valuable tools as well as a wealth of information you can put to use right away to improve performance individually and across your entire organization.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in December 2007.