Managing Organizational Change

Change is common to all organizations. At no time in history has change occurred as rapidly and fundamentally as it is now. While change is a normal and natural phenomenon in any organization, Accelerated Organizational Change can wreak havoc in a company.

InterContext’s Managing Change Consulting Services assist a client company in effectively dealing with the multiple issues and tensions inherent in accelerated change. Establishing a "Managing Change" program allows companies to gain control of the change process, harness its dynamics, and make it work to their advantage. Managing Organizational Change has a direct impact on corporate leadership, the structure of the organization, employees, and productivity. The corporate culture frequently reflects the changes that are taking place. Planned change takes advantage of what is happening, or needs to happen, and steers it in the right direction.

InterContext’s Managing Change Consulting Services are custom-designed for each client company, since every situation is different. Consulting services comprise the following phases:

1. Situation Analysis
2. Proposal Development
3. Delivery of Services
4. Feedback and Recommendations

Upon acceptance of the proposal, delivery will begin by:

1. Individual meetings with Senior Management
2. Group Meeting with Senior Management Team
3. Group Meetings with appropriate managers

Upon completion of the Service Delivery phase, the following feedback sessions are delivered:

1. Individual meeting with CEO or Division Head
2. Group Meeting with Senior Management
   

Executive and Management Effectiveness

InterContext's Executive and Management Effectiveness Consulting Services are designed to assist client companies that require increasing individual or group performance effectiveness.

This occurs either because the company identifies a remedial situation, where an employee's performance does not meet expected performance standards, and the company wishes to improve the employee's effectiveness, or the company identifies a developmental challenge where addressing the company's growth needs will require collective improvement of Employee or Managerial Effectiveness.

It is important to remember that Executive and Management Effectiveness can be successful only when they are delivered in the context of the Corporation's Vision and Strategic Objectives. Most CEOs, division or department heads function according to the vision that they have for the future. While in some companies such a vision is crystallized into a strategic plan, others have a sense of direction, even though it may be less defined. It is precisely this vision that determines the beginning point for executive and managerial effectiveness.

Any effort made to unify a group, or conduct individual assessment outside the context of the corporate sense of direction is wasted time and expense. However, within that context, the efforts has enormous value.

The InterContext approach, therefore begins with an extended interview with the CEO when work is being done on a company-wide basis, or the Division or Department Head when the intervention is to affect a specific business unit.

This vision is explored, discussed thoroughly, and understood. Ideally, such a meeting would result in a summary that would briefly state the corporate or business unit's direction in concrete terms. In accomplishing the tasks associated with the corporate direction, or strategic plan, it is critical that there must be key individuals who are involved in the management process. This poses the question: "Are the key individuals the right ones. Are they capable of engaging in a team effort to move the company forward in the direction of the vision and objectives?"

Executive and Management Effectiveness Consulting Services are comprised of the following elements:

I. The Assessment of Key Individuals

An InterContext professional conducts a personal interview with each key individual. This is followed by the completion of standardized, validated assessment instruments, which are then analysed and interpreted. The purpose of the instruments is to provide further insight into the behavioural styles and management strengths of these individuals.

Next, InterContext will write a comprehensive profile for each individual, based upon the interview and the data gathered from the instruments, as they apply to the stated corporate vision.

Next, confidential feedback is given to each individual involved in the process.

The CEO, Division or Department Head is then provided with an executive summary, containing a brief description of each individual, along with any other appropriate professional observations.

Ideally, the CEO, Division or Department Head, will also participate in the assessment process, providing him/her with a clearer understanding of the effectiveness measures being used for his/her executives or managers.

II. The Capacity for Team Work

Built into the assessment process is the determination of each individual's capacity for cooperation and team work. Many managers who function well independently have little or no capacity for team work, while others, who are equally competent, thrive in the context of a team. The issue at stake is that when it has been determined that team work is important and incorporates the values and direction of the CEO, it is essential that all key individuals be capable of functioning in a team setting.

The InterContext approach to assessment delivers an accurate appraisal of the capacity of each key individual for team work, and a professional opinion regarding the potential of the group. In addition, suggestions will be made concerning ways in which collaboration can be improved with the group.

Team Building

Team Building may be undertaken, with or without an assessment phase, but it goes without saying that in an ideal situation the two will work hand in hand. As corporate officers are charged with moving into the new Millennium, emphasis on teamwork, cross-functional cooperation and synergy continue to increase.

Such program ideally should be held at an off-site location and span at least two days of concentrated effort, although it can be adapted to fit other time frames.

Team Building programs require intensive preparation consulting with the corporate CEO or head of a business unit, and members of the actual work group.

This is followed by the actual design of the programme and executive approval.

The actual program is undertaken off-site in an appropriately secluded setting where interruptions can be minimized and concentration and substantial interaction is maximized.

Team Building programs require follow-up assessment and consulting six months following the actual programme for all participants. This feature is included in the service at no additional charge.

Measurement and Assessment of Training & Development

Since companies are concerned with where they are today (Current State) and where do they want to be (Future State), the inevitability of needing to measure their processes, outputs, unit costs become obvious.

Initiatives such as ABC, ABM, TQM, BPI and others under equally esoteric acronyms are blossoming everywhere. We at InterContext suggest adding Return on Investment (ROI) to that list.

We will assist you in measuring and evaluate your training & development efforts with the goal of adding accountability and a continuous improvement component.

Your Company will be able to:

InterContext will provide your company with measurement/assessment data at the following Evaluation Levels:

Level 1: Measures satisfaction with the programme and captures participants' action/improvement plans

Level 2: Measures changes in knowledge and skills

Level 3: Measures changes in on-the-job behaviour/performance

Level 4: Measures changes in business impact variables

Level 5: Compares programme benefits to programme

Dr. Gerrit Knodt, Senior Partner at InterContext, has been trained and certified by Dr. Jack Phillips of the Center For Research and uses Dr. Phillips' philosophy and methodology.

InterContext has a significant record of accomplishment in assisting organisations in measuring the effects of their training and development interventions on the individual, the team and on their tactical and strategic objectives. We can do this by leading such project or by training internal professionals to perform such measurement/assessment themselves.

Pre-Hire Assessment

Hiring a new contributor into an existing team is both costly and risky. Despite the competencies of the individual, the question of 'fit' remains. Statistically, most individuals are severed from their jobs not because they lack the knowledge and skills required by the job, but because they “don’t fit”. Their attitudes and values clash with those with whom they must collaborate and cooperate. Selecting the wrong person becomes a significant expense to the company. Pre-hire Assessment prevents this situation from occurring.

Pre-Hire Assessment is the process by which both the suitability of the candidate and the question of 'fit' in the organization can be addressed simultaneously. This is time and cost effective, and significantly reduces the possibility of a “misfit”.

When selecting individuals for people management assignments, InterContext professionals will use structured, competency-based, behavioural interviewing and assessment center techniques, bio-data analysis and personality/value testing in order to improve the probability of the individual's success.

InterContext professionals will use job competency-based behavioural interview techniques, validated behaviour/value profiling and assessment centre techniques to ensure the identification of those candidates with the highest probability for success in a specific position.

Personal feedback to the candidate and to the designated Company Human Resources Officer is included in the service.

Employee Assessment

This is a particularly valuable program when a company is poised for rapid for rapid growth and needs to identify High-Potential contributors, or when a company is going through a restructuring or downsizing situation.

Assessment has been described as an integral part of Executive and Management Effectiveness. Assessment, then, is a component that can be combined with other offerings, or stand-alone.

Using a process that includes personal interviews, standardized instruments, interpretation and feedback, employee assessment can be used for any level throughout the company.

Assessment may be used for different purposes: pre-hire to determine competency and fit for the organization; career planning, guidance, options; problem-solving or conflict resolution when individuals collide; identifying high potentials; identifying burn-out.

Services include comprehensive written and verbal feedback to program participant and to the designated Company Human Resources Officer.

The Management Growth Process ® MGP

Developed by one of the founders of InterContext, this highly effective multi-rater process, built on the foundation of researched and validated behaviours in the area of goal setting, coaching, appraising, compensating/rewarding, team building and leadership when assessing a manager's people management skills and behaviours in the area of commitment, communications, customer focus, interpersonal skills, planning, leadership, respect and team building when assessing a manager's effectiveness in his/her relationship with the boss, peers and customer, provides the information required to develop and improve your company's managers.

The results generated by MGP enables management to make decisions regarding formal people management training using either the custom-designed Excellence in People Management programme, or individual feedback and coaching, or a combination of all, in order to improve people management skills. MGP makes it possible to measure the amount of transfer of learning to the job, as well as providing annual feedback to individual managers as they strive toward achieving people management excellence.

MGP changes acts into consistent behaviours.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

Conflict Resolution

Especially in today’s complex business environment, conflict is a fact of organizational life. Neither inherently good nor evil, disagreements nor disputes may foster creative insights and foster closer relationships among executives or they may generate lasting resentment and hostility. Whether conflicts are constructive or destructive depends on how they are handled. To suppress conflict in an attempt to avoid trouble and minimize discord is often extremely harmful to team effectiveness and organizational productivity.

A trained InterContext professional can assist in verifying the existence of such conflicts and provide the third party mediation that in most instances can only be successfully accomplished by an expert outside of the organization.

The InterContext professional will bring to such a potentially volatile or paralysing situation the objective assessment and intervention skills so critically required to return balance and effectiveness to the management team. By identifying the issues and by assisting those individuals involved to confront their differences, conflict can be turned into opportunity.

InterContext will help to identify the four key elements in every conflict (frustration, conceptualisation, behaviour and outcome) and assist in the development of an action plan that will lead to resolution.

Executive Coaching

Executives in key organisational positions are constantly confronted by the pressures caused by having to make critical decisions under extreme time pressures, then managing to processes to ensure successful execution and implementation of these decisions.

Also, the corporate political environment sometimes causes conflict creating active and passive resistance to necessary change and the implementation of creative, innovative ideas.

InterContext’s Executive Coaching provides the executive with a safe environment in which thoughts and ideas can be exchanged that lead to reduction of stress, the assessment, confrontation and resolution of problems, and enhanced personal/professional effectiveness.

Dr. Knodt brings to this role a background in professional counselling and thorough understanding of human behaviour as an academician, counsellor and practicing human resource and organisation development professional.

Needs Assessment, Design and Delivery of Training Programs

• Behavioral Interviewing and Selection Skills
• Coaching Skills for Line Managers
• Consultative Selling Skills
• Creativity and Innovation
• Effective Influencing and Consulting Skills
• Effective Meeting Skills
• Effective Performance Appraisal Skills
• Effective Presentation Skills
• Excellence in People Management
• Human Factors in Project Management
• Negotiation Skills
• Effective Goal Setting
• Time Management Skills
• Train the Trainer (Effective Training Skills)