Our Approach to Organizational Culture and Change
At HigherEchelon, we know that organizations are complex. Guided by a thorough assessment of your organization and its unique situation, we design and implement organizational solutions that work and have a positive return on your investment.
HigherEchelon consultants are highly educated professionals with extensive experience as former leaders of large, complex organizations. Our clients represent all sectors — large and small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, government, military, and non-profit. Solutions are tailored to what you need, when you need it, and are based on tried-and-true best practices. We make great use of diagnostics and pre- and post-implementation data analytics to measure return on investment.
Below is an example of what a full culture Assessment and Transformation process could look like for your organization:
*Approximate amount of time for each phase will vary by engagement and need
MISSION – VISION – VALUES ALIGNMENT
It is very difficult for an organization to go from good to great if employees are confused about what the company does, where it’s going, and what values guide how the company does business. To achieve high performance, the company’s mission, vision, and values must be aligned.
Alignment is crucial to business success. When your company’s mission, vision, and values are aligned, everyone from prospective clients to potential employees know what you do, how you do it, where you’re going, and what you stand for. Mismatches between your mission, vision, and values lead to confused employees, lower performance, and less satisfied employees.
HigherEchelon uses a host of tools and techniques to assess mission – vision – values alignment. These tools include some combination of scripted structured process interviews, focus groups, and tailored alignment surveys. Tools selected for your particular organization depend on your company’s situation.
We often find that even good organizations can be poorly aligned. This misalignment pecks away at productivity and performance, and hinders achievement of aspirational goals. Misalignment also negatively affects all aspects of human resources management, including recruitment, selection, promotion, and retention.
CULTURE ASSESSMENT AND TRANSFORMATION
Culture: people talk about it incessantly. It does not matter the sector, the venue, or the type of company: people want a winning culture, want a high-performance culture, want to change a toxic culture, or want to hire a new leader who builds culture.
HigherEchelon can help. Our team has led culture assessment and transformation projects at the highest levels of government, the military, professional and intercollegiate athletics, and business with great success.
Here’s the good news: the techniques and tools honed by our consultants apply equally well for smaller firms and non-profits.
Our deep understanding of culture is derived from decades of sound science which informs best practices for culture assessment and transformation. Peter Drucker famously quipped: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That’s because no matter how strong or well-constructed the strategic plan, success comes down to the people, processes, and technologies deployed to implement — or obstruct — the plan.
Our HigherEchelon consultants are experts in the field of organizational culture. Our process for assessing and transforming culture is simple and straightforward. We start with a thorough, deep-dive assessment, go where the data take us, design a plan to address cultural mismatches and inadequacies, and then implement the plan approved by the client.
For more information on culture assessment and transformation, check-out these publications from our HigherEchelon team of experts:
- You Can’t Change Culture Until you Understand it
- How to Build a Winning, High-Performance Culture (new chapter in Leadership in Dangerous Situations)
- Crucial Characteristics of Strong Cultures
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Frequent change is a feature of modern work. Maybe your organization is transitioning to a new technology. Maybe there is an important organization-wide initiative that is floundering. Maybe core service offerings or products are deeply embedded in legacy systems that need to change, but employees are slow-rolling the change or even sabotaging the initiative.
Change is hard: 70% of all change initiatives fail.
HigherEchelon can help you and your organization with managing change. We apply the Prosci ADKAR model for change management, which is based on the work of MIT’s Edgar Schein and Harvard’s John Kotter. Our simple, step-by-step approach keeps your change on track and minimizes the risks associated with declaring victory too soon.
For more information on change management, check-out these publications from our HigherEchelon team of experts:
- Effective Change Management with the ADKAR Model
- Why Most Change Efforts Fail (and 4 ways to help them succeed)
- Technology Change – 5 Costly Mistakes Organizations Make (and how to avoid them)
- Simple Salesforce Tools That Amplify Change Management.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
We know that planning stinks because it forces us to confront a future that we may be incapable of envisioning.
We also know that plans change the moment execution begins — no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The literal translation from Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke (1871) is more eloquent: “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.”
So, why plan? Because failing to plan is planning to fail.
The “big lie” of strategic planning is that it’s the result of a complex process of exhaustive research and modeling. It’s not. It’s about making your informed best bets about positioning your company in the future.
Uncomfortable for sure. Involving lots of effort, yes. Getting key players involved to have difficult conversations and debate about direction? Absolutely.
We know that strategic planning is based on the best practices of following a disciplined, intentional process of making your best bets about what will work for your organization in the future. Strategic planning is not endless, and it’s not perfect. The whole endeavor tends to make us uneasy. As Roger L. Marting says in Playing to Win (2013): How Strategy Really Works, if you are comfortable with your company’s strategic planning, chances are you’re probably not doing it properly.
At HigherEchelon, we will guide you through the strategic planning process to produce a plan that optimizes your company’s chances for future success. Your strategic plan will address the following components:
SUCCESSION PLANNING
Employee Succession Planning
Succession planning is most often thought of in terms of CEO or Senior Leader succession. In reality, succession planning is for everyone in the organization. At HigherEchelon, we do both: we address employee succession planning in terms of career progression and we can assist your organization with the transition of your CEO or senior leader.
HigherEchelon views employee succession planning as career progression in your organization. Everyone needs a plan as to where and how they fit in the organization. Absent such a plan, organizations can expect high turnover, little employee loyalty, and endless recruitment.
CEO / Senior Leader Succession Planning
HigherEchelon recognizes that proper CEO or senior leader succession planning is among the most important and delicate tasks for every organization. You cannot afford to get it wrong.
Current science and best practice views the CEO’s journey as a 3-act play: Act 1 is about taking charge and establishing credibility; Act 2 is about recalibrating and reenergizing; Act 3 is about transitioning the organization to a successor and positioning the company for the future (see Nitin Nohria “The CEO’s Journey is a 3-Act Play” in Harvard Business Review, 7/19/2024).
HigherEchelon works with your organization to assist the outgoing and incoming CEOs and staff with all elements of creating and executing the succession plan, including strategic communications, timeline synchronization, organizational design and structure, and workforce alignment.
We also help you to have the difficult conversations about roles and responsibilities, task accountability, authority, and appropriate behaviors as the outgoing and incoming CEOs throttle back and ramp up, respectively. HigherEchelon helps your organization to discuss the undiscussables and address sensitive transition planning elements to eliminate friction and make the process simpler and more seamless.
We work with you to tailor a succession plan that fits your organization’s situation.
For more information about any of our culture and change offerings — mission-vision-values alignment, culture assessment and transformation, change management, strategic planning, succession planning — book an appointment below or contact steven.spaulding@higherechelon.com (706) 755-0326 to design the best solution to fit your needs.
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