Our Approach
Organisation Development achieves its purpose if it is driven by strategy and designed to achieve a marked difference in performance. Our interventions are designed to have a serious impact on the way your people think, feel and act. We believe this fundamental change is realised only when the business case for it is compelling, your executive leaders are committed to their role in achieving it, the stated values support the endeavour and your company’s systems and processes are aligned with the ethos and strategy.
Our processes are informed by the four key concepts described here.
SYSTEMS THINKING
We recognise that every intervention has consequences for the whole system and we take care to ensure that there is organisation-wide alignment around the purpose of the intervention. We match the structure and systems to the strategies and product or service requirements. We ensure that the corporate culture supports the vision and enables people.
FUTURE ORIENTATION
We enable organisations to become skilled at consciously designing and creating their future. We integrate learning drawn from the current business circumstances with a bold and imaginative interpretation of the organisation's future. The picture that emerges becomes the guiding framework for all development.
PROFOUND LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
Our competitive edge exists in our ability to facilitate human development. People's mindsets and thinking skills, their emotional intelligence and their maturity determine the value of their corporate performance and their ability to rise to future challenges. We are skilled at engaging people in learning and change at a profound level, thus enabling companies to harness a potent source of competitive advantage.
COMMITMENT TO SOUTH AFRICA
We are deeply committed to making a difference in South Africa. The work we do is intended to develop people and organisations that will contribute to Africa's renaissance. Our interventions give people the insight and the foresight to make informed choices for themselves, their families, their businesses and their communities.
THE WORK WE'VE DONE
The level of performance required to compete in the global arena is light years ahead of previously accepted standards. Competence of this order does not just happen. It has to be proactively developed. This is the work that we do.
Due to the sensitivity of our work, two generic examples of change processes and interventions we have designed and conducted recently are presented here.
Company X
The success of a relatively new entrant into the financial services sector depended on their ability to change the way people thought about personal banking. The daunting task was taken on by a bold leader and a very young management team. They needed to develop the emotional skills to handle themselves through a very challenging start-up period and the leadership skills to engage the rest of the organisation in the enterprise. We worked alongside them over a number of years, providing a culture profile, leadership development and coaching for senior employees. The management team worked with us to develop their relationship skills and team effectiveness. In addition, every member of staff was involved in a process that explored the strategic challenges they faced and helped them develop the resilience to rise to them.
Company Y
This company had made a very large IT investment and was implementing an enterprise-wide information system. The return on investment depended, at the least, on people being willing to learn new skills. At a more fundamental level, they needed to be able to rethink the way they did their jobs and re-evaluate how they added value. People inevitably felt threatened and defensive. Managing this process successfully required technical training but also emotional support. Managers needed to become leaders and everyone had to take responsibility for creating the culture. We assisted the company by taking a high profile role in the implementation process so that people knew that the company took their concerns seriously. We facilitated information-sharing workshops to keep people up-dated on progress and everyone in the loop. We provided leadership development processes for senior managers to help them cope with the increased demands from people as they dealt with the change. And we provided change agent skills development for everyone playing a supervisory role in the implementation process. The conversion was relatively pain-free and the loss of staff as a result of the change, was minimal.